


Set Fire to our Homes

by frombluetored



Series: It's Tea Time [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, some swearing in Lily's POV chapters, switches POVs each chapter, this is a sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 458,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9125506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frombluetored/pseuds/frombluetored
Summary: As Albus and Scorpius begin their life together, Albus discovers that married life is every bit as wonderful and difficult as he always anticipated it would be. Life is better now that they're free from the looming threat of a Dark Arts resurgence, but Albus quickly realizes that there are plenty of other threats, too, like aggravating bosses and unexpected bouts of baby fever. Meanwhile, officials within the Ministry unearth a rapidly-worsening problem: for reasons unknown, the frequency of Squib births has quietly and suddenly quadrupled, leading to serious concerns over what might be prohibiting wizards and witches from passing on their magical genes-- and what that might mean for the coming generations of Wizardkind. While James and his new Ministry department struggle to deal with the societal impacts of an unprecedented amount of Squib children, Lily and Albus find their jobs--and their lives--intersecting in an unexpected way.





	1. I. Trial Run

As the minute hand of the clock inched ever closer to the twelve, Albus found his eyes lingering longer on the clock than his paperwork. There was a ball of tense, impatient frustration in his chest that’d begun forming early that work day after the _first_ alert about a ‘burglar’ that ended up being nothing more than a strong gust of wind or a wayward stray. After a day of paranoid elderly wizards convinced the shape on their toast was a Dark Mark, young Hogwarts students already bored on Christmas holidays owling the Auror department for a laugh, and the incident with the skunk inside Madam Malkin’s, Albus wanted nothing more than to run from the Ministry as fast as his legs could carry him.

So, of course, when his shift _finally_ ended, the Head of the Auror Office found it prudent to enter his cubicle.

“Albus,” he said, his eyes focused on an opened folder. _No, no, no, no, no, don’t you dare, you selfish, air-headed prick…_ “Have you finished your report on the Borkin theft?”

Albus clenched his fists from beneath the desk. He bit back his sarcastic response with extreme effort.

“Yes, I left it on your desk last week. Didn’t you see it?”

“No…no…” He continued examining the parchment held in front of him. Albus inhaled deeply.

“Right, well, I left them there—just on top of your calendar, _exactly as you told me to_ —but, you know, it wasn’t _really_ a theft, the Borkins—”

“Could you make another copy?”

Albus stared. His boss still hadn’t had the decency to meet Albus’s eyes even once—he was still looking at the folder in his hands.

“Sorry?” Albus demanded.

His boss finally looked up. He met Albus’s eyes. “The report. Could you rewrite it and leave it on top of my desk before you leave today? I suppose it got misplaced. Hill needs it.”

_Yeah, it got misplaced because you’re the most scatterbrained idiot I’ve ever met, and I’ve met quite a lot of idiots._

“Actually, Young, I’ve got a half-shift today, so I was about to…to leave…” Young had lifted a challenging eyebrow, as if Albus had decided to leave early without his permission. Albus backtracked. “I, erm. We discussed this about five months ago and changed the schedule? I’ve got a wedding to go to tonight.”

Young observed him with a steely expression.

“Right,” he finally said. “I’m not certain I recall…I do wish you’d reminded me earlier this week…”

“I did.”

“What?”

“I did remind you. Twice this week, actually.”

His irritation was blooming dangerously. Young raised his eyebrows.

“Oh? And you’re certain you can’t skip it, only I need this report—”

“I’m positive I can’t skip it. I can redo the report for you this weekend and have it to you by Monday.”

“ _Monday_?! You’re coming in tomorrow, aren’t you?”

Albus took in a measured breath. He turned his eyes to the framed photo on his desk of Scorpius and his nieces and nephews to remind himself why he shouldn’t lose his temper and unleash one of his mum’s Bat-Bogeys. “ _No_ , we covered this when we reworked the scheduling. I’ve got to watch my brother’s kids tonight and tomorrow.”

“Well, your partner can watch them.”

Something about the word _partner_ rubbed Albus the wrong way. He shifted in his seat and narrowed his eyes slightly. _Don’t lose your temper, don’t lose your temper, don’t lose your temper…_

“Er…no. No, sorry, that’s not going to work. My _husband_ can’t watch all four of them alone.”

“Is he not good with children?”

“No, he’s very good with children,” Albus scoffed, briefly affronted on Scorpius’s behalf. “He’s the best with them. He’s a children’s Healer for Merlin’s sake.”

Young furrowed his brow. “Is he? I thought he worked in the Dark Magic ward.”

“He did until—” he stopped; it wasn’t any of Young’s business. “Look, I promise to have the report ready for you by Sunday evening. Does that help?”

“And you’re _positive_ that you can’t just miss the wedding or come into work tomorrow.”

“Absolutely positive.”

Young sighed heavily (as if Albus were severely inconveniencing him). Albus gritted his teeth.

“Well, I suppose you can go to this wedding and take the weekend off. I expect the report by owl Sunday evening.”

As if Albus had to have Young’s written permission to go do something in his spare time. Albus was seething.

“I—” _Don’t do it. Think about your family—think about Scorpius. Don’t do it._ “Fine. Yes, fine, thank you, sir.”

Young sniffed. “You’re welcome. You’re lucky I like you, Potter.”

“Yeah…thanks.” Albus smiled a tight, polite smile until Young left his cubicle, and as soon as he was gone, he murmured underneath his breath: “You certainly like my surname, anyway.”

Albus threw the necessary paperwork he’d need to rewrite his report into his bag, tossed in the various cloaks and coats, coffee mugs, and Tupperware containers that’d accumulated in his office throughout the week, and then left the department in a jog, his cloak only half-on. He was so intent on avoiding any and all human interaction that he nearly shut the lift doors in his aunt’s face.

“Albus!” his aunt cried, affronted.

“Oh, sorry! Sorry, Aunt Hermione.” Albus waved his wand and sent the doors in the opposite direction; the small gap where he could only just make out Aunt Hermione’s vexed expression gradually widened as the doors slid apart. Hermione stepped onto the lift.

“In a hurry?” she asked, a stern eyebrow lifted, as if she were still considering scolding him. She looked him over. “What have you done to your cheek?”

Before Albus could complain, his aunt was fussing over the slice over his cheekbone. He felt the skin grow warm as she mended it with her wand.

“I got into a tussle with a ‘thief’ that was actually a feral cat,” Albus muttered bitterly.

“Let me guess…Old Fran is at it again?” Aunt Hermione asked. Albus could hear a smile brewing. “I honestly just think she likes the company. She’s been calling Aurors there over an ‘intruder’ for nearly fifteen years now.”

“Yes, it _was_ Fran, and it was funny the first twenty calls, but now it’s getting downright annoying,” he grumbled. He wasn’t in the mood to find anything funny at the moment. “How she mistakes the same tomcat for a ‘seven-foot burglar’ morning after morning is a mystery to me.”

“Maybe the cat’s actually an unregistered animagus?” Hermione suggested lightly. He could tell she was still considering laughing.  

“Checked that the first call. The cat nearly took my eyes out. It took Scorpius an hour to put my eyelid back together.”

That stifled all potential laughter. The lift came to a stop a few seconds later. Albus shuffled to the side as three other wizards and witches stepped on. They struck up a conversation with Hermione. As soon as the lift arrived at level 5, Albus squeezed his way through the doors. He turned around to wave at his aunt, but to his surprise, she was following after him.

“You’re going to see James, too?” Albus guessed.

“Yes, I’ve got some news for him,” Hermione affirmed. “Rose sat in on a meeting with the International Confederation of Wizards today and she said that France has also seen a significant decrease in magical births.”

James—who oversaw the entire Department of Social Relations and Services—was responsible for (among many other things) making sure that every magical birth was documented so that mandatory yearly home visits could begin in a timely manner. This news didn’t mean much to Albus, who didn’t have access to the statistics surrounding magical births and hadn’t even known there _was_ a decrease, but it was vaguely worrying that _two_ countries (at least) were seeing a decline in magical children.

“Weird,” Albus noted.

“And—though nobody will tell me—I think the geneticists in the Department of Mysteries have been looking at this for a while now,” Hermione continued. “Their department started asking for more and more funding around the time that this became a noticeable problem.”

“You _think? You’re_ the Minister, can’t you just tell them to tell you what they know?”

“By law, they only have to tell me if it’s pressing to our society’s safety, so I’m assuming it isn’t a pressing issue. At least not yet, anyway.”

“I could try to get it out of Evvie tonight if you’re really curious; she’s always blabbing personal things after too many drinks.”

Hermione looked at him, alarmed. They came to a stop outside of James’s office.

“She tells Department of Mysteries information?”

“Well, no, she’s never done that, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“Albus…”

“I’m only joking, Aunt Hermione,” Albus reassured her. _Partially, anyway._ “I take classified information very seriously.” _Seriously…ish. Unless I’m talking to Scorpius and then everything is fair game as a conversation topic._ “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much; with the rate that James and Nora pop them out, our society will be well-stocked with mischievous, magical children.”

He stuck his wand into the sensor on James’s office door and waited for the familiar _click_. It opened to chaos—as it always did. Albus was accosted first by the warm smell of vanilla and cinnamon that seemed to follow the Potter family everywhere they went. Next, the familiar, intermingled sound of giggling children and their parents’ contrastingly calm conversation. James was at his desk, his newest baby cradled in his left arm as he scrawled a letter out with his right hand, mid-conversation with his wife. His two-year-old, Henry, was sitting atop the desk building some sort of haphazard structure with ink bottles that was surely going to collapse and spill over the letter at any moment. Nora was half-dressed—still in a slip with her bridesmaid dress hanging along the far wall—trying her hardest to get Finnigan to relinquish his hold on his stuffed elk so she could put his tiny suit on him, all while discussing what sounded like travel plans with James from above all the ruckus, entirely unaffected by the chaotic nature of it all.

Albus exchanged a look with his aunt. She looked as taken aback as she always did; James’s office was, in many ways, the stark opposite of her own.  

Albus decided a quiet entrance was probably best, so he didn’t announce his arrival, nor did the kids seem to notice it straight away with everything else that was going on. He kicked a muggle football and a toy train out of his way. He weaved through the minefield of wayward toys and emptied toy baskets over towards where James and Nora’s eldest child was, minding his every step so as not to accidentally step on another ‘cherished toy’ as he had last time he’d visited the office. His five-year-old niece was stretched out on her tummy on the carpet, a magnificent set of muggle crayons set in front of her as she tranquilly shaded in her drawing of a bear. She was already dressed for the wedding; she was wearing a sparkly purple dress with her curly hair pulled back into an elegant knot-braid-thing. She was also wearing the tiny high-heeled shoes that Scorpius had purchased for her a few months back (because he was weak when it came to the Potter children and couldn’t seem to get the word _no_ past his lips). He would be thrilled to see her wearing them. At the thought of the smile Scorpius would undoubtedly give, Albus felt a strong surge of affection for his husband, one he channeled into his hug as he swooped down and suddenly lifted his niece up into his arms. She let out sweet, shrieking laughter and squeezed him tightly.

“Alby!!” she celebrated.

Albus turned her around to face him with some difficulty (he’d never fully recovered all his muscular strength after his attack in his fifth year—just as he’d never regained the ability to get a nick on his skin and not promptly bleed to death without intervention). He propped her on his hip and smiled down at her. Somebody had dusted her light brown cheeks with a conservative amount of lavender-colored glitter; it gave her an even more angelic appearance than usual as the light played off the sparkles. She’d even been permitted a touch of lipstick—Nora’s, by the familiar shade of it—and was certainly all smiles because of it.

“Evra, you look like an angel,” he told her, his smile still in place. She beamed. He had to shift her over to his other hip as his arms began to ache. “I think you’re getting too old to carry now, you know that?”

Evra’s eyes widened with shock. “What?! No! No, I don’t want that! I want to be carried forever, ‘til I’m as old as you are!”

Albus laughed. “As old as I am?! That’s pretty old.”

“I know, but I want to be carried that long, ‘til I’m fifty like you,” she insisted.

“Fifty! Try twenty-two.”

Evra giggled. “Twenty-two!!”

Albus poked her side. “Is that funny?”

“That’s _ancient_!” She reached up and set a small palm against his cheek. “You should _still_ be carried too, Uncle Albus.”

“Oh yeah? By who?”

“Well, your mummy, your daddy, your Scorpius, your aunts and uncles…” Evra listed off.

Albus struggled to contain his laughter. He switched Evra back over to his other hip because this arm was beginning to ache, too. “My Scorpius?”

“Yes, I think he would carry you,” Evra confirmed. There was a brief pause, and then: “This is my new dress. It’s periwinkle. And Daddy put glitter on my cheeks and Mummy let me wear lipstick like her!”

“Periwinkle! It’s all very nice, you look beautiful,” Albus said seriously. Evra grinned widely; her dimple popped up above her smile. Albus looked over her head towards his brother. He was now helping his son Henry into his suit while Hermione informed him of what she’d found out. Nora was doing her own hair one-handed in front of the mirror while her other arm held her youngest. Baby Delilah was snuggled up to her chest and snoozing quite deeply despite the chaos. Albus spotted Finnigan sneaking biscuits from the tin atop the filing cabinet. He figured he could make himself useful until Scorpius arrived. He set Evra down. She promptly took his hand.

“Let’s go see what Finnigan is up to.”

“I know what he’s up to!” Evra said, as Albus guided both of them through the toy and parchment maze littering the carpet. “He didn’t get his biscuit after nap because he pushed Henry and so Mummy said he would have to find sweet Finnigan again before he could eat anything sweet and now he’s trying to ignore Mummy and take a biscuit anyway which is not fair or sweet at all and I think Father Christmas would not be happy about it.”

Finnigan jumped guiltily as Albus walked over to join him, and as he did, his little knee slipped from his precarious perch atop the cabinet. Albus only barely managed to catch the three-year-old around the middle before he toppled down face-first.

“Hello, Finnigan,” Albus greeted sternly.

Finnigan—his cheeks bulging with biscuit—managed a deceptively innocent smile. Albus leaned over and set him safely on the floor.

“I’be fwound sweet Binniban,” Finnigan said, bits of moist biscuit falling from his mouth as he did. Albus grimaced. He wasn’t that great with this part of taking care of kids—the part that involved chewed-up food, vomit, poo, blood...

“Yeah?” Albus asked skeptically. He brushed chewed-up biscuit off Finnigan with a grimace. “You shouldn’t steal biscuits. Stealing isn’t sweet.”

“Daddy does,” Finnigan said innocently.

Albus wasn’t sure what to say back to that.

“Yeah, well, of course your dad does, but…he’s an adult, so…and he buys the biscuits, so...and he’s _James_ , so…” he realized Finnigan wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. He changed tactics. “Finnigan, is it true you pushed Henry down earlier?”

Finnigan blinked his wide, brown eyes. “He stole my mummy.”

“Henry can’t steal _your_ mummy; you’ve both got the same mummy.”

“No...I don’t think so.”

“Er, yes, you do. I was there when both of you were born.”

“No…Mummy’s mine.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Albus sighed. He patted Finnigan’s hair. “You’re going to have a difficult time away from Mummy and Daddy this weekend, aren’t you?”

Finnigan’s eyes went even wider. “Mummy and Daddy are leaving?!”

“Oh, bollocks...”

“That’s a swear word,” Evra frowned. Albus looked up as James joined them. Henry wriggled in James’s arms until he set him down; Albus let out a pained _oof_ as Henry headbutted his kneecap in his haste to hug him.

“Hey, Al,” James greeted.

“ALBY!” Henry cheered. He latched onto Albus’s leg and pressed his face into his knee. His breath was unpleasantly warm and moist against the fabric of Albus’s trousers as the toddler began chanting: “ALBY, ALBY, ALBY!” into Albus’s leg. Albus reached a hand down and patted his hair.

“You didn’t tell the kids that you’re going away this weekend, James?” Albus demanded.

“ _What_?!” Evra shrieked. Her face lit up. “Going _away_?! On holiday?! Where are we going?! To the beach? Daddy, are we going to the beach?!”

James frowned. “Well, we were going to tell them, but we could never find the best way, and _that_ definitely wasn’t it…”

Evra tugged persistently at James’s hand.

“Where are we going, Daddy?” she repeated brightly.

James looked deeply pained. It seemed difficult for him to force the words past his lips. They were thick and reluctant. “Evra…Mummy and I are going on holiday. Just for a few days…just Mummy and I.”

It took Evra a moment. When she fully grasped what James was telling her, her little face fell. She looked at James with an utterly heartbroken expression. “Without me? You’re leaving without _me_? Leaving _me_?”

“Not forever! Just for three nights—oh, come here,” James frowned. He opened his arms and lifted Evra up. She began sobbing quite theatrically into his shoulder and held him in a vice-like grip.

“Y-You’re l-l-leaving?! W-w-why?!” And then, almost as if it were all pouring out of her at once: “A-Albus said I’m t-t-too old to be c-carried!” she wept.

James shot Albus a nasty look. Albus scowled right back. James hugged Evra tighter and kissed her hair.

“That’s not true; you’re my precious, perfect princess and I can still carry you, look, I’m carrying you right now—”

“Why are you leaving?!” Evra cried.

“Mummy and I are going with Benny and Evvie on a trip.”

“But why can’t I go? Benny and Evvie love me and they love Henry and they sort of love Finnigan!”

“Ginevra!” Nora called, her voice injured. “You could hurt Finnigan by saying that.”

“I’m s-s-sorry, Finny, but I’m n-not happy and I can’t f-find happy w-words!”

“It’s okay,” Finnigan said nicely. He reached up and patted Evra’s leg. Nora crossed over—finally fully dressed—and lifted Finnigan up into her right arm. Albus did an awed double-take; how was she able to hold both the baby and Finnigan?

“Hi, Albus,” Nora greeted. Her smile grew a bit strained as Evra began another round of sobs. She turned her attention to her daughter. “Evra, did Daddy tell you where you’ll be staying while we’re with Benny and Evvie?” Nora asked gently.

Evra sniffled. She sat up and wiped at her eyes. “W-where?”

“Tonight you get to stay with Albus and Scorpius—”

Evra perked right up. Her tears seemed to vanish. “Scorpius?!”

Albus tried not to feel insulted.

“Yes! And then, on Saturday evening, Dean and Seamus are going to collect you lot—”

Evra was practically twisting in excitement now. Her face was bright with an exuberant grin. “Dean and Seamus?!”

“Yes! And then, on Sunday, Ginny and Harry will collect you—”

Finnigan went to clap his hands excitedly and managed to smack himself in the face. He hardly seemed to notice. He was beside himself with joy. “ _GINNY!”_

“Yes, and—”

Evra exploded. “GRANDAD HARRY, HARRY BEARY, HARRY MY HARRY—”

“So you’re feeling better about this?” James teased.

“When are you leaving?!” Evra asked excitedly.

Finnigan peered around Nora. “Is Ginny here now?”

“Dean?” Henry asked. He’d toddled over to the door. He was smiling expectantly at it. “Dean here?!”

Even baby Delilah gave a happy coo. James’s smile plummeted.

“ _Ouch_ …” he whispered. He looked at Nora. Nora looked equally wounded.

“I didn’t expect it to hurt this much to have them happy to see us go…” she admitted, her voice small.

“No, I know, I feel like she just kicked me in the—”

“James, Nora,” Albus interrupted in disbelief. “You haven’t spent a night away from Evra since she was born.”

“Right,” they said in unison, their voices breaking together. Albus frowned.

“No, I’m not saying that to upset you, I’m saying…you haven’t spent time without kids since you were eighteen…no, seventeen in James’s case…make the best of it!”

They exchanged uneasy looks. “Maybe we shouldn’t go…”

“I think Evvie would understand,” James agreed.

“We could still get half back on the tickets.”

“Yes, what were we _thinking_?” James demanded. “We can’t leave our kids, our babies. They’d be lost without us.”

“Right! Lost!” Nora agreed. She cradled Delilah closer and kissed Finnigan. “Don’t worry, my babies, Daddy and I—”

“—are _mad_ ,” Albus completed for her. He looked at them incredulously. “James, you’ve been looking forward to this trip for ages. A muggle cruise! You’re not going to give that up.”

James held Evra closer. Henry had made his way over to James once he’d realized Dean wasn’t going to appear at the doorway; James lifted him up as well and cradled both children tightly. “But…”

“Ben would be really upset,” Albus told him. “Your best mate. You can’t let him down like that.”

“ _But_ …”

“You and Nora could shag all day long if you wanted to. I’m sure that’s precisely what the newlyweds will be doing.”

James had parted his lips to argue, but at that, he failed to come up with another ‘ _but.._.’ He turned to look at his wife. His eyes had that sickeningly familiar _Nora look_ in them, the kind that was so sweet it was nauseating.

“Just you and me for once,” James said.

Nora shared a slightly lovesick smile with James and then looked down at Evra.

“It would be nice to spend so much time with your family, right, Evra?”

“With my Scorpius and Albus and my Seamus and Dean and my Ginny and my Harry?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

Evra pursed her brow. “Can I bring Padfoot along?”

Nora laughed. “We’ll see. Last time Padfoot was at Ginny and Harry’s house he nearly ate Harry’s pygmy puff.”

“He did _not_ like that,” Evra remembered.

“No…no, he didn’t.”  

There was a pause. “What’s ‘shag’?” Finnigan wondered.

Albus winced. “Oops.”

* * *

Scorpius was supposed to meet them at the office so they could all travel together via Muggle transport. They didn’t want to apparate with the kids, and anyway, there was a strict no-magic policy at this wedding, one that Albus had been reminded of nearly twenty times now.

“He must’ve gotten held up,” Albus told James and Nora. He’d been sitting on the sofa with baby Delilah, but as the minutes continued trickling by, he realized he’d need to figure out exactly what was keeping his husband. He rose and passed his niece back to James. “I’ll Floo him.”

He was halfway to the fireplace when flames flickered into view. He could make out the shape of Scorpius’s head a moment later. He felt warmth invade his chest as Scorpius’s image filled the fireplace.

“Hello!” Scorpius beamed.

“Scorpius!” the kids chorused. There was a pattering of tiny feet as those who could walk sprinted over.

“Hello there!” Scorpius greeted, this time gentler and to the kids. “You lot look so smart and lovely!”

Evra curtsied.

“Look at my shoes! You got them for me!” she told Scorpius. Albus stepped to the side so Scorpius could see the tiny silver heels.

“Oh, yes! They look _beautiful_ , Evra!” Scorpius gushed. Evra beamed.

“Did you get held up?” Albus guessed.

“Yes. One of the burn victims came down with dragonpox. I’ve finally found somebody to cover for me, though…Henry, what are you doing?”

Albus felt a light pressure against his hip, and when he glanced down, he saw Henry on his tip-toes, desperately trying to sneak Albus’s wand from his pocket.

“Oh, sorry,” James said quickly. He leapt up from the couch, passed Delilah to Nora, and then ran over. He lifted Henry up and threw him over his shoulder; Henry shrieked with laughter. “He accidentally summoned Padfoot with Nora’s wand a few days ago and now he associates wands with the dog.”

“I want Paddy,” Henry sniffed.

“Oh, I know, love,” Nora told him softly. James dropped Henry onto her lap after taking Delilah back. “But Padfoot is all the way at home; he could get hurt speeding all this way.”

“No he couldn’t,” Henry whined. “He’s strong.”

“Yes, he could, Henry,” Nora said. She cuddled him close a second later; that seemed to diffuse whatever tantrum had been brewing. Henry snuggled contently into her embrace.

“So when will you be finished?” Albus asked, turning back to Scorpius.

“As soon as my replacement arrives. It should be any moment now. I’ve got to change and then I’ll be there. James and Nora, do you need to go on ahead? You can leave the boys and the baby with Albus and I’ll be there shortly, we can get them to the venue; you two and Evra are in the wedding party, I wouldn’t want you to be late because of me.”

“No, it should be okay,” James reassured him.

Scorpius smiled at Albus. Albus grinned back.

“I’ll bring your suit,” Scorpius promised. “It finally arrived at the shop today.”

“How awful is it?”

“It’s not awful!”

“It’s not silk, is it?”

“No. Just a typical muggle suit, like your dad sometimes wears,” Scorpius promised. “I had the Muggle lady help me choose ours. They’re in style this time.”

“Okay…” Albus said skeptically. He hadn’t forgotten the time he’d let Scorpius do his shopping and he’d suddenly found himself with a wardrobe full of fancy French clothing with fasteners in strange places and fragile, slick fabrics. Living with Scorpius was often times disorienting like that; he’d wake up to Scorpius casually mentioning doing ‘a bit of shopping’ during the lunch break and then he’d come home from work to a thousand-galleon cauldron that supposedly made potions better than ordinary cauldrons, and Scorpius wouldn’t even bat an eye about it. Scorpius might’ve avoided the superior attitudes that came with wealth, but he’d never actually learned the concept of frugality, or really the concept of money at all. He thought one-hundred galleons was an acceptable price for a lamp whereas Albus always brought his mum and gran along on his shopping trips to ensure he found the best bargains.

“You’ll love it,” Scorpius beamed.

* * *

 

He did not love it. He tugged at his tie, at the hems of the sleeves, at the buttons.

“It feels too tight,” he complained.

Scorpius was still seated on the sofa, having his hair ‘combed’ by Henry, so he didn’t turn around to look.

“You’ve got to unbutton it when you sit,” Scorpius said.

Albus had turned back to the mirror, but at those words, he spun around to face Scorpius. He watched Henry combing Scorpius’s hair down into his face for a moment, utterly baffled.

“Why didn’t you just get it in my size?” Albus finally asked.

“I did get it in your size, that _is_ your size,” Scorpius said. He glanced back. His white-blond eyebrows rose in surprise; an endearing smirk followed. “You look _amazing_ , how could you think it’s not your size? It fits you perfectly.”

Albus squinted at him. He refused to let himself be swayed by flattery. “You just said I’d have to unbutton the jacket when I sit.”

“Oh, no, that’s just what you do with these suits. I don’t really know why, though…Henry, thank you, I think my hair is really well-combed now— go and play with—Henry, that’s…”

Henry attacked Scorpius’s hair with even more fervor. Scorpius sighed.

“But I don’t understand; if I’ve got to unbutton it just to sit, I don’t see how that’s a good fit,” Albus persisted.

Scorpius stood up; Henry threw his arms around his uncle’s neck so Scorpius had no choice but to carry him on his back over to Albus. Albus’s eyes naturally skimmed down Scorpius’s form. He noticed that the suit _did_ appear to fit Scorpius extremely well; he got a bit distracted admiring the fit to his husband’s chest and shoulders.

“Did Young annoy you again today?” Scorpius asked. His hand came over to rest against Albus’s stomach. He pulled at the suit. “It fits fine.”

“Yes, he was extremely annoying. How’d you know?”

“Because whenever Young annoys you you mope at me about silly things,” Scorpius said matter-of-factly. Albus scoffed. “I think you look beautiful and the suit is worth the labor of unbuttoning your buttons. Isn’t he lovely, Henry?”

“Yes,” Henry said sweetly. “Love-y!”

“Henry also thinks animal dung is lovely—”

“Don’t start…” Scorpius warned, though there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“And really, why are we going to this wedding? Evvie’s all right, Ben’s all right, but we could actually spend this night off at home and I could make quick work of undoing these buttons once and for all—”

“Albus…”

“I’m just saying that maybe this wedding isn’t the best idea—every time we force ourselves to go somewhere when one of us isn’t sure about it, something awful happens—”

Scorpius’s mouth pressed to his, cutting off his complaints. Albus tried to hold onto his irritation, because he had really wanted to vent it all day long and he could always count on Scorpius to listen to him, care, and understand, but it was impossible to stay angry with his lips to his. He heard Henry and Finnigan cheering from somewhere behind them.

“I love when they do that,” Evra told her parents. “They should do that more.”

“I think they probably do that plenty, darling,” James assured Evra.

“But I don’t see them do it as much as you and Mummy do.”

“That’s because you live with us, Evra…you only see Albus and Scorpius a little bit.”

“No…a lot a bit.”

“They do it all the time, right, Albus?” James persisted.

Albus pulled back from Scorpius. “James, why the hell—” Evra’s wide, worried eyes greeted him as he looked over at his brother. His previous words (“ _why are you asking me to reassure your daughter that Scorpius and I kiss all the time?”)_ died before they’d even made it past his lips. “…Yep. Yes, Evra, all the time.”

“It’s a hobby,” Scorpius said cheerfully.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

Scorpius was laughing when Albus looked back at him. His face was alight with amusement. Albus smiled.

“We’re going to have an interesting night,” Scorpius muttered. Albus leaned in and wrapped his arms around Scorpius’s waist. With his body pressed into Scorpius’s, he had to admit he did appreciate the close cut of Scorpius’s suit. He could feel the day’s tension slowly ebbing from his body the longer he was in Scorpius’s embrace.

“At least there’s an open bar at the wedding reception.”

* * *

As soon as they arrived at the wedding venue, they were ushered into a backroom by Clementine Clearwater. When they entered, Scorpius, Evra, and Finnigan gasped, but not for the same reasons.

“ _Pretty_!” Finnigan cried.

“You look like a _princess_ _swan,_ ” Evra gasped.

While Finnigan and Evra ran over to Evvie, Scorpius was gaping.

“No!” he hissed to Albus.

“You okay?” Albus asked.

Scorpius pointed at the bride and groom, sitting together on the sofa. “ _No!_ ”

“Er…”

“They can’t _see each other before the wedding_ ,” Scorpius said, horrified.

Albus rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go with Draco and Gran’s bollocks—”

“That’s the one thing they actually agreed on, so it must be important,” Scorpius defended.

“Or they’re both a bit…” Albus trailed off, searching for a kind adjective. “Too involved in the wedding process. They’re the reason it took us so long to be married…marriage on a full moon on the fifteenth day of a month, I ask you…”

“Malfoys believe it brings lifelong stability and wealth.”

“Malfoys believe a lot, as it turns out.”

Scorpius gently elbowed Albus’s ribs. He grinned at him and took his hand as they walked over to join the members of the wedding party (all the Sevens’ members from Hogwarts days), most magical guests, and their nieces and nephews (who were now climbing all over the bride and groom).

“Hello, Albus and Scorpius,” Evvie greeted. Finnigan plopped down in her lap a moment later, his hands reaching for the flowers stuck in her complicated hair updo. Ben intercepted his tiny hands with a well-timed handshake.

“Don’t grab the flowers, mate,” he told Finnigan. “Evvie’s mum spent hours placing them in ‘the perfect place’,” he elevated his voice to a high-pitched poshness in imitation of Evvie’s mum. Evvie reached over and smacked his stomach.

“Good job!” Finnigan praised her.

“Albus, Scorpius,” Clementine said. Albus turned as she joined them. She was slightly out of breath. Evra had ended up in her arms somehow. “I brought you back here to remind you that there can be _absolutely no magic_. Evvie’s mum despises the magical world, her dad’s family is entirely comprised of Muggles, and Ben and Evvie shouldn’t have to spend their wedding night Obliviating family members.”

“It’s not us you should worry about,” Albus said, his eyes landing on Henry from above Clem’s head. He had somehow gotten a hold of James’s wand. “Henry’s got this obsession with—oh. Oh, no. Henry…Henry, put it down…”

Albus started over towards his nephew, but it was too late. He’d begun waving the wand around enthusiastically. A moment later, both the glass of water in Evvie’s hand and the baby bottle in James’s shattered into minuscule pieces. There were a few startled gasps and then silence, broken only by Delilah’s angry shrieks, as she was now covered in the milk she’d only just begun drinking and glass shards.

“Your dress!” Evra said, horrified, her eyes on Evvie. The water from her broken drinking glass was now seeping into her wedding gown.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Louis stepped up. “It’s just water; we can siphon it off.”

Meanwhile, James—equally drenched—was carefully picking glass off Delilah, his eyes wide with shock and his hands quivering.

“Glass…my baby…glass…my baby…glass…my baby…” he was murmuring, panicked. Nora had hoisted Henry up and snatched the wand away, but as soon as she heard James’s frantic words, she rushed over to his side. Scorpius moved towards them to see if Delilah had been cut by any of the shards and Albus followed. Delilah was thankfully uninjured, but she was extremely furious; having your meal explode right in front of your eyes was rightly annoying. Nora gently wiped her face clean while Scorpius began picking glass from Delilah just as James was. Nora looked down at her bag and began rummaging through its contents for something, and James was so involved in the glass-retrieval that he failed to notice Delilah squirming in discomfort. She brought her hands up to her mouth. Albus’s heart leapt.

“No,” he murmured underneath his breath, his eyes on his youngest niece. He didn’t want to panic—surely Delilah wouldn’t…

She would. She pressed her milk-drenched fists to her mouth—fists that certainly had tiny slivers of glass still mixed within the milk coating them, and began to suck on her knuckles. Albus let out a strangled cry as all sense left him; all he could think about was the baby cutting her tongue and the insides of her mouth—

“ _No_!” He shrieked. And without thinking, he withdrew his wand and sent a blast of water right at Delilah and James, strong enough to immediately wash the glass and milk away as if he’d hosed them down. Delilah gave a stuttering cry of alarm at the sudden coldness and then began shrieking.

“Albus!” James sputtered, shocked. He was entirely soaked now. Water was dripping from his sopping wet hair onto the carpet. Nora, Scorpius, and Henry were nearly just as bad off. They wiped water from their eyes and looked to Albus in surprise.

“She put her hands into her mouth!” Albus explained. “Scorpius, will you…?”

Scorpius, still a bit shocked from the sudden burst of cold water, nodded. He leaned over and gently pried Delilah’s mouth open. He pulled his wand out, murmured _lumos_ , and inspected Delilah’s mouth as best as he could while she gnawed enthusiastically on his fingers with her gums.

“I think she’s okay,” he told them. “Hungry, though. Do you have another prepared for her?”  

“Technically Nora’s got a supply with her at all times,” James said helpfully. “Which is great because Delilah has _definitely_ inherited the Weasley appetite.” Albus rolled his eyes, and when Nora actually laughed genuinely at James’s breastfeeding joke, he rolled them even harder.

“Seriously,” James stressed, his smile suddenly vanishing. “Don’t feed her late or, Merlin forbid, miss a meal. Follow the schedule we’ve left in the freezer bag down to the minute.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Albus asked. He didn’t like the sound of this.

“You’ll see the dark side of Delilah,” James said ominously. 

“That’s just the biggest lie,” Scorpius cooed to Delilah. Her tiny hand was closed around his thumb. “You’re just the sweetest little baby, aren’t you? Your dad is telling lies about you, oh yes he is…”

While Scorpius baby-talked Delilah, Nora and James shared a knowing look. A few moments later, Delilah began squirming in discomfort again. She gave a pitiful cry.

“Are you hungry, little bear?” Nora asked. Delilah reached out for her mum immediately. Nora pulled the baby into her arms and kissed her hair; Delilah smiled hugely and nuzzled into Nora’s embrace. And then, to Albus’s surprise, he was treated to a hug from his sister-in-law. She kissed his cheek in thanks as she pulled back.

“You’re such a great uncle, Al,” she told him warmly.

Albus decided it was better to just accept her compliment instead of reminding her of the time he’d accidentally left baby Finnigan inside a cupboard.  

* * *

 

All in all, the wedding was beautiful. Sure—the little Muggle boy bearing the rings tripped on the excessive rose petals Evra threw down, Evvie’s mother (a Squib from an affluent Pureblood line) got into an argument with her sister halfway through the ceremony and actually got up to switch seats, Henry escaped Ginny’s arms and ran up to Nora in the middle of the vows, indifferent to the fact that his mummy was currently playing Maid of Honor, and Teddy and Victoire’s son Remus giggled so loudly throughout the kiss that he nearly wet himself, but Evvie and Ben both looked radiant and blissful, and that was the most important part. Oh, and they’d made it through the entire ceremony without Henry doing accidental magic.

Albus, Scorpius, the Potters, Rose and her strange new boyfriend, and the other Potters sat together at a long table for the dinner reception. Albus was unfortunate enough to have been placed beside Rose.

“So,” he said awkwardly. He was increasingly aware of how long it’d been since he’d last seen her—and the tense way she’d left things with all her family. “How are…things?”

“Fine,” she said stiffly.

Across from them, Harry was gently bouncing Delilah on his lap as she giggled, Ginny was telling Scorpius all about Lily’s last letter, and James and Nora were busy cutting up the food on their kids’ dinner plates. Albus had no excuse not to have this conversation with Rose.

He looked back at Rose reluctantly. He cleared his throat and glanced at the man on her other side.

“So. Otto, was it?” he asked.

“Yes. And I know who you are, of course. Albus Potter.”

“…Right,” Albus said. Something about the smug way Otto spoke irritated him. A horribly awkward silence settled over them. Albus longed for Scorpius to engage him in his ongoing conversation with Albus’s mum, but he didn’t. Thankfully, by some miracle, Otto rose.

“I’m going to get another bottle of wine for the table,” he told Rose. He leaned over and kissed her cheek before he walked off. Albus watched in disbelief as Rose promptly wiped it off with her napkin.

“Who the f—”

“Don’t start, Albus,” Rose warned.

“No, I will! I will start! Because I don’t like him, I don’t like _Otto,_ I don’t like his entire, you know, attitude and personality, and I refuse to let you avoid telling me what happened with you and Iset! It’s rubbish! You don’t get to come to my flat drunk, sobbing your eyes out, only to run off to Germany for six months and never return a letter or answer any of my questions!”

“I don’t need _your_ permission to do anything—”

“Do you know I haven’t heard a word from Iset since that night? Scorpius and I went to your cottage but she’s moved out! It’s been sitting abandoned since you left!”

 _That_ got an emotional reaction from Rose. Her face fell.

“What? What do you mean you haven’t spoken with her?”

“I mean she’s done a runner just like you did. What _happened_ , Rose?” Albus demanded. Rose made a noncommittal grunt and reached for her wine glass. Albus felt anger swell up his throat. “No, Rose, this is _bullshit_! She didn’t even come tonight, did she, and she thinks of Evvie as a sister—what did you _do to her_?!”

“I didn’t do anything to her! Okay? She did it to herself and I wasn’t going to sit by and just watch it happen and—” Rose’s words broke off with a strange gulping noise. Albus watched her down the entire contents of her full wine glass. Her eyes were watering as she set it back down onto the table. She lowered her voice. “Her dad owled her about eight months ago and said he wanted to meet with her to talk things out…didn’t even apologize, mind you, just owled her and demanded that she hear him out…and I begged her not to go because that’s what that disgusting scum of a man does, he always appeals to her guilt and manipulates her into feeling something for him, but she insisted that she needed to go hear what he had to say because he’s her _father_. She went all the way to Azkaban, got involved with her parents’ prison drama, and it started really…” Rose broke off with that same weird, strangled noise again. Albus realized she was fighting back rising tears. She stole his wine glass this time, as if she could push the tears down by drinking more. Her hand was quivering as she set the glass back to the tabletop. She fiddled with the napkin in her lap as she continued. “It really messed her up again and I couldn’t watch it happen…I couldn’t bear to see her fall so far again, couldn’t bear to watch her revert to how she’d been before I even knew her…it hurt too much and I told her so, I told her to walk away from him and save herself, but he started saying all this rubbish about how he’d _kill himself_ if she didn’t visit him weekly and bring him sweets or whatever the hell he asked for, and while she’s doing this she’s having horrible night terrors and she’s getting sick after them and she can’t even pet our cats without shaking and I—”

This time, the tears won out. Albus looked around them uncertainly as Rose gave a strangled sob. His parents had stopped talking. Albus could sense that Scorpius’s posture had turned rigid with worry without even turning around to look at him.

“Rose, are you all right?” Albus’s mum asked at once.

“F-fine, I’m sorry, ignore me,” Rose said quickly. Her mascara was already starting to smear down her cheeks.

Albus sighed and reached over, settling his hand on Rose’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rose. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I d-didn’t want to—what I did was the last thing I wanted but I d-didn’t know what else to do, it hurt so much, I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered.

Otto returned at the worst possible moment.

“I chose a merlot, I think it’ll pair excellently with—Rose, what’s wrong?”

He made the mistake of setting his hand on her back. She stood abruptly.

“I need the loo,” she said.

Ginny and Nora rose at once. “Us too.”

“Me too!” Evra said. She hopped down from James’s lap and hurried over, sinking a hand into both her mum’s and grandmum’s hands. Albus bit his lip uncertainly as the women left the table.

“What was that about?” Harry demanded.

“I…asked her about Iset,” Albus admitted. “Or…harassed her about Iset.”

“Albus,” Scorpius said softly, a frown audible in his voice.

“You just had to, didn’t you?” James scowled. “We agreed we weren’t going to bring that up tonight.”

“What’d you find out?” Harry asked curiously. James and Scorpius looked at him in disbelief. “I mean…yeah, probably not the best…the best place or time…for…that question…” he cleared his throat. “Oh, look, I think Delilah needs a nappy change…”

And with that, he stood from the table, most likely to sneak into the toilets to tell Ginny the latest almost-gossip he’d heard.

“He’s a gossiper using my daughter as an alibi! Delilah doesn’t need a nappy change, I know when she needs a nappy change and it’s at least another hour ‘til then,” James scoffed.

Scorpius reached over beneath the table and settled his hand on Albus’s thigh. Albus looked up at him.

“I deserved to know,” Albus said. He was well-aware of the stubbornness audible in his tone, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. “We’ve been worrying ourselves sick for ages…Iset is _our_ friend…Rose should have been honest with us well before this!”

“We can’t blame her for Iset’s decisions,” Scorpius reminded him softly. “Iset decided to do what Iset wanted to do. She chose to shut us out. That’s not on Rose.”

“It certainly _is_ on Rose!” Albus argued back. He felt a flash of genuine irritation. “ _You_ didn’t hear the entire story! She abandoned her, Scorpius—when she needed her most!”

Scorpius frowned. “I just think we ought to refrain from crucifying anybody…Albus.”

Albus looked away stubbornly. “What?”

“Don’t get angry with me…it’s ten days ‘til Christmas!”

Albus felt the corners of his lips twitch. He wrestled the smile back. “So? There’s a rule now that says I can’t be angry with you ten days before Christmas?”

“Absolutely!” Scorpius affirmed. “A Potter-Malfoy rule…a very serious one at that!”

Even now, a year since their wedding, Albus felt a ridiculous amount of toe-curling affection flood his body at the word _Potter-Malfoy._ That affection doubled any time he heard Scorpius refer to him as his husband in conversation with other people. Albus wanted to remain surly, but there was nothing for it. He had to turn around and meet Scorpius’s lips. He reached up and set his palm on the back of Scorpius’s neck as the kiss deepened. He was considering dragging Scorpius off to a quiet corner when he felt a hand tap the top of his head—and he knew it wasn’t Scorpius’s hand, because both of Scorpius’s hands were well accounted for. Albus pulled back from Scorpius and reared around, confused. Shock overwhelmed him at the sight of the person who’d interrupted him, enough so that for a moment, he was speechless.

 _“Lily_?” Albus finally demanded.

“Lily!” Scorpius cried, pleased. He stood from his chair right as James and his children cottoned on to Lily’s unexpected arrival—the table shook slightly as James, Scorpius, Henry, and Finnigan hurried over towards Lily. Albus was still staring.

“Where the hell is your hair?!” he heard himself blurt.

Lily’s unexpected presence was shocking enough (she’d told them all time and time again that she wouldn’t be able to make it back until Christmas Day), but it was her new haircut that _really_ floored Albus. He studied her foreign appearance with mounting confusion. Lily had whined and stamped her feet about even having her hair _trimmed_ her entire childhood…and now she was standing in front of him with her hair chopped off just above her shoulders. It was wrong. It looked…wrong. Albus felt a creeping foreboding at the sight of it.

“Seriously,” he reiterated, as James, the kids, and Scorpius attacked Lily in a massive group hug. “What did you do with it? Your hair, I mean?”

“Hello to you too, Albus,” Lily scoffed, her hand patting at Finnigan’s back. It was a good thing that she hardly had to wear her glasses anymore (thanks to the completion of her eye-sight potion a few years back, a potion that only had to be taken daily to give the user around twenty hours of perfect eyesight), because if she _had_ been wearing them, they certainly would’ve been pushed off as Henry set about pressing clumsy kisses to every inch of his aunt’s face.

“What are you doing here?” James asked. He slung an arm around Lily’s tattooed shoulders and beamed. “I thought you couldn’t make it back until Christmas? Dad and Mum are going to be over the moon! Dad’s been moping for days since you sent your letter about only coming home for Christmas and Boxing Day!”

“Here,” Scorpius said quickly. He waved his wand and summoned a spare chair over towards them. He pushed it in between his and Albus’s chairs. Albus reached up and tugged at Lily’s short hair as soon as she sat beside him. Lily slapped his hand.

“Sod off, Albus,” she said, her eyes flashing.

“No! What is this about?”

“What’s _what_ about?”

Albus jabbed a finger at her exposed shoulders, to indicate her missing hair, but as he did, he noticed a large number of new burns. The entirety of her upper back (unfortunately not covered by her dress, as Lily tended to choose dresses that covered less than Albus personally thought they should’ve), most of her left shoulder and bicep, and the left side of her neck were blanketed in shiny pink burns. She’d tattooed colorful flowers over these burns as she always did (her arms, in particular, were adorned with many interconnecting flowers covering dragon-caused scars), but the flowers didn’t detract from the seriousness of the burns. Albus knew when their parents saw them they’d probably lose it.

“There was an incident,” Lily answered him shortly. She turned to Scorpius. “I decided to cash in my hoarded holiday days.”

“But why?” James pressed. “You said you couldn’t leave the baby dragons.”

“What _sort of_ incident?” Albus asked.

Lily clenched her jaw. She averted her eyes and squinted off towards another table. “Where’s everybody else? Mum, Dad, Nora, Evra?”

Albus really wanted to continue prying (Lily’s answer had created more questions than it’d answered), but Scorpius reached around Lily and touched Albus’s shoulder, a touch Albus took to mean “ _please don’t.”_ Scorpius was better at reading people when it came to sensitive issues, so Albus—not wanting to create tension at the table again—decided to oblige him.

“Auntie Lulu,” Finnigan said. He pushed his way between Scorpius and Lily and climbed up into her lap. Albus saw her wince slightly; he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from asking questions again. “Did you bring me a present?”

“Don’t be rude, Finnigan,” James scolded gently.

Finnigan looked back up at his aunt. “Did you bring me a present, _please_?” he amended.

Lily laughed. She reached down and tapped the tip of Finnigan’s nose; he collapsed into predictable giggles.

“My presence is a present, isn’t it?” she teased.

Finnigan wrinkled his nose. “No…that’s not a present, ‘cause you can’t wrap it up.”

“Well,” Lily said, and as she did, she shifted and reached down for her handbag. “Now that you ask…I did bring something that I thought you’d like…” with a dramatic flourish, Lily produced a muggle pen from her handbag, clearly teasing. But Finnigan’s face bloomed with a brilliant smile. He grinned and reached for the pen at once before Lily could laugh it off.

“YAY!” he celebrated. “A _magic quill_!!”

And with that, he promptly uncapped it and began drawing on his left hand, his bottom lip caught between his teeth in adorable concentration. Lily slowly withdrew his real gift—a small box wrapped with metallic, dragon-patterned paper and tied with a bow. She looked at James.

“Had I known he’d love a pen so much, I wouldn’t have bothered with present shopping,” she admitted.

James nodded. “Ben bought Finnigan his own roll of wrapping paper last Christmas…he got more joy out of wrapping everything and everybody he could get his hands on than any of his toys, magical _or_ muggle…lessoned learned.”

While Finnigan happily traced over Lily’s exposed tattoos with the pen, Scorpius and Lily began a somewhat awkward conversation about her journey back to England. She affirmed that the portkey from New Zealand was as difficult to organize as it always was, but her answers were much shorter than usual, and something was clearly weighing on her. Scorpius finally caved in and broke his own rule.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly, his hand coming to rest on her burned shoulder. “You seem upset. Did something happen?”

“No,” Lily lied. She reached back, as if to pull at her hair as she sometimes did when feeling stressed, but she stopped as her hands touched air where her hair used to be. She swallowed and looked away. “I’m fine. Great, even!” Scorpius looked like he wanted to press the issue. Lily stood abruptly. “Finnigan, let’s dance!”

“Okay!” Finnigan beamed. He wrapped his arms around Lily’s neck and pressed a messy kiss to her cheek.  

“Me too!” Henry cried. “Henwy, too! I want to!”

“Of _course_ ‘Henry, too’, don’t lay an egg! C’mon!”

As Lily pushed her way onto the dance floor, a nephew on each hip, Albus glanced across the table to gauge James’s reaction. He looked just as worried as Albus felt.

“Do you think she knows Caden is here?” Scorpius wondered. He pointed across the room towards the bar, where Caden Rowle was laughing with some muggle woman, a drink in hand.

Judging by the over-exaggerated way Lily was laughing and twirling on the dance floor, the not-so-subtle looks she sent Caden’s way every few moments, and the quick, furtive glances he was shooting back in response…she was very aware.

“They must’ve ‘ended things’…again,” James said. He rolled his eyes, amused. “This is…what? Their twelfth break up this year?”

“Who can even keep up?” Albus snorted. But he couldn’t help but feel like Lily’s mysterious problem had very different origins than her Hogwarts sweetheart.

* * *

 

The reception ended without any more emotional outbursts, but Albus still left the hall feeling uncomfortable about a handful of things. The first source of his discomfort was his sister’s borderline-risqué behavior near the end of the reception after far too many drinks; she’d flirted her way through five muggle men before Caden Rowle seemed to succumb to his mounting jealousy, and then the two had disappeared entirely. Albus felt considerably anxious about her going off somewhere drunk, but at least it was with Caden. And—as his mum had repeatedly reminded him—Lily was an adult, and neither he nor Harry nor James could tell her what she could and couldn’t do anymore (even though all three had very much wanted to).

The second and far more pressing source of concern were his nieces and nephews. There had only been a brief round of crying when James and Nora hugged the children goodbye, but Albus could tell that was simply because the children hadn’t really processed what _goodbye_ really meant. Having never been left by their parents for more than a couple of hours at a time, the children had no frame of reference for abandonment, and Albus was certain they would not take it well when faced head-on with the concept.

Lastly, an ongoing source of social discomfort: Rose and Iset. Rose refused to speak with Albus for the rest of the reception and left without even telling him goodbye, leaving Albus feeling _worse_ about the entire situation than he’d even felt before when both Rose and Iset had disappeared without so much as a card. He was in such a foul mood over Rose’s attitude and her betrayal of Iset that he’d nearly reached his emotional breaking point. He was tired of being in public, tired of talking to people, tired of pretending to laugh, and he wanted nothing more than to go home, have a drink, and have sex with Scorpius.

And unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to do any of those things tonight.

“All right,” Scorpius said cheerfully. He helped Henry and Finnigan up the last step. “Almost there! This is our floor!”

“Yay!!” Finnigan cheered.

Evra was already beginning to look nervous. She picked at the sparkly polish on her fingernails. “But where’s Padfoot? And Olive? And Honey? Are Mummy and Daddy going to bring them here?”

“Louis is watching Padfoot and Olive while your mummy and daddy are gone,” Scorpius reassured her. “Padfoot’s probably curled up on the bed with Louis right now!”

“And getting biscuits?” Finnigan asked.

“Sure,” Scorpius agreed. “Loads of biscuits.”

“Olive is probably hiding under the bed,” Finnigan said sagely. 

“Probably,” Scorpius agreed.

Nora’s cat was ancient – twenty years old at last count—and preferred being in only four specific places: Nora’s lap, James’s lap, Evra’s lap, or underneath furniture. She was a sweet cat, but she had a significant dislike for chaos, so the kids (Finnigan and Henry mainly, though she wasn’t exactly Remus’s biggest fan, either) weren’t always her preferred company.

“Alby,” Evra persisted. “I want Honey.” Her voice was still strained with anxiety. She leaned into Albus’s side. His stormy thoughts were quickly overrun by concern. He looked down at the top of her head. He would’ve reached for her hand, but he was holding baby Delilah.

“Honey is here,” Albus promised her. She still slept with the stuffed bear Scorpius had given her the day she was born, a bear she’d eventually named ‘Honey’. “Your parents dropped your things off earlier today. Everything is already inside the flat. And here we are now! Almost time for bed. You look tired.”

“I’m not,” she said. Her heavy-lidded eyes and frequent yawning told a different story.

Scorpius unlocked their flat and ushered the boys inside. Evra followed after, perking up a bit at the familiar surroundings. She and her brothers ran and jumped up onto the sofa. Delilah was thankfully still snoozing safely in Albus’s arms, having been lulled to sleep by the car ride from the reception venue; he immediately set off towards his and Scorpius’s bedroom to settle her down in the cot James had brought over that morning. She gave a small yawn right as he settled her on the mattress, but after a few moments, she sank back into a deep sleep. Albus let out a relieved breath. James and Nora had been unnecessarily dramatic; Delilah was easy to care for.

Feeling a bit better, Albus returned to the sitting room, where Scorpius was trying to talk the kids into bedtime. It didn’t appear to be going well. Henry was bouncing on the sofa cushions, Finnigan was building a fort with the decorative pillows, and Evra had crawled beneath the coffee table with a blanket and her teddy bear, Honey.

“It’s been a very long day!” Scorpius said. “Aren’t you lot tired?”

“No!!” Finnigan, Evra, and Henry chorused.

“We want to play,” Evra said.

“Can we play?” Finnigan asked. And then, as if he remembered James’s earlier scolding: “Please?”

“Well…” Scorpius trailed off. He glanced over at Albus. Albus _really_ wanted to go to bed, but he was certain that the kids were too keyed up now. Even if they sent them to bed right now, they’d be awake for another hour.

“Sure,” Albus said. “A little bit of playing. But then it’s straight to bed! Understand?”

“YAY!!” the three cheered.

Albus walked over and sat on the loveseat. Scorpius collapsed down beside him.

“With luck,” Albus hissed, his hand moving over to find Scorpius’s, “they’ll fall asleep while they’re playing. Then we’ll only have to move them to the bed—easy.”

“Yeah, maybe!” Scorpius agreed. He lifted their clasped hands and kissed the back of Albus’s. He smiled tiredly. “Are you less cross?”

Albus didn’t even bother pretending that he hadn’t been in a mood for at least half the night. And if he were truly being honest with himself, he would’ve admitted he’d been in a mood since his first annoying task at work that morning.

“A bit, yeah,” Albus said. He let his head fall against Scorpius’s shoulder. “Being home with you always improves my mood.”

He felt Scorpius’s lips brush his temple. “I wish you’d quit. Young is not nice.”

“Young’s an arse,” Albus corrected.

“Yes. He takes advantage of you.”

“I don’t really have an alternative, do I?”

“Yes. You could be my house-husband. _I’ll_ take advantage of you.”

Albus grinned broadly. He appreciated every glimpse he got at Scorpius’s more naughty sides, even if he knew he couldn’t realistically appreciate them the way they needed to be with their current company.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said instead, his words lowering.

“I mean it—I don’t mind. I make enough money,” Scorpius persisted.

Albus studied his husband’s eyes. The love he saw within them always made Albus’s heart feel three times larger. He knew that Scorpius meant every single word he said—but he loved Scorpius too much to ever take him up on his lovesick offers. It wouldn’t be fair. If Scorpius had to work all day, then Albus did, too. Even if he hated it.

“My dad says it’ll get better,” Albus said. “The first couple of years are always challenging, apparently.”

“I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy,” Albus said at once. He had to laugh a bit at the mere idea. He turned to face Scorpius fully. He reached up and took his face into his hands, his thumbs sweeping over his sharp cheekbones. He studied his light eyes. “I’m not.”

Scorpius’s face brightened as he smiled. “You’d tell me if you were?”

“I’d whine about it nonstop, don’t you worry,” Albus affirmed. He leaned in and kissed Scorpius’s lips. It didn’t last for nearly as long as he would’ve liked (but then again, he would’ve liked to have pushed Scorpius back onto the couch cushions and done more than just kiss him). He felt like he’d only _just_ pressed his lips to Scorpius’s when they heard a loud crash, followed at once by wailing. They both jerked back from each other and turned to survey the scene. Finnigan had managed to actually flip the coffee table over onto its side, trapping poor Evra’s ankle between the edge of it and the floor. Albus hadn’t seen how hard it’d been pushed over, but judging by the rapid swelling and awkward angle of Evra’s thin ankle, it’d been hard enough to at least fracture something. Not for the first time, Albus was breathlessly relieved that his husband was a healer.

“Finnigan!” Albus scolded, as Scorpius immediately hurried to Evra’s side. Finnigan had been staring wide-eyed at his sister, but at Albus’s stern tone, he turned and ran from the room. Albus would’ve followed after him, but Henry began crying along with Evra, and a few seconds later, he heard Delilah’s cries join the symphony. Albus could feel a headache forming.

“ _Evra_!!!” Henry wailed. He had taken distraught steps over to his sister and was now patting her hair, his eyes wide with shock.  

Evra was growing hysterical. Fat tears were rolling down her cheeks, making streaks through the glitter dusted on her face. “I w-want my _mummy_! Daddy! Daddy!”

Their tears made Albus’s heart pound with anxiety. Seeing Evra in genuine pain and Henry in genuine distress left him feeling a bit shell-shocked. Scorpius—who was used to seeing children in pain—was entirely calm and sure. He stroked her curls back from her damp face with his left and waved his wand with his right; the coffee table lifted up off Evra’s ankle. She gave a shout of pain as the level of pressure on her ankle shifted, but Scorpius didn’t hesitate for very long. He aimed his wand at her ankle and murmured a mending spell. The odd angle of her ankle evened out and the swelling and purpling eased, until it looked entirely normal and she’d stopped crying. 

Scorpius gently pulled her over into his lap. She held him tightly and pressed her face into his neck. She began crying again shortly after.

“I want my mummy and daddy,” she sobbed.

“Oh, I know, Evra,” Scorpius whispered sadly. He gently pulled the pins and bands from her hair so it could fall freely. He patted her back. “I know you miss them, but they’ll come back. They always come back.”

While Scorpius soothed both Evra and Henry, Albus ventured towards the back of the flat to retrieve Delilah and find Finnigan. He pushed open the door to the first guest room, but it looked relatively untouched. He checked the second one after that, but it too was empty. That left the bathroom and his and Scorpius’s bedroom. Albus checked the bedroom first, hoping desperately that Finnigan wasn’t in the bathroom getting into trouble. Thankfully, he spotted a small lump beneath the now-rumpled duvet. He let out a relieved breath and then hurried over to lift Delilah. She settled down as soon as he had her in his arms. She pressed her face (damp with both tears and snot) against his shoulder and began gnawing on his shirt. Albus grimaced, but he didn’t dare move her, for fear of setting her off again. With Delilah clutched in his arms, he settled down onto the edge of the bed. He leaned over and set his free hand on Finnigan’s back.

“Finnigan. What’s wrong?” he asked.

Finnigan didn’t respond for a long moment.

“I’m sorry if I upset you, but you could have really hurt Evra,” Albus continued.

Finnigan sniffled loudly. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to knock the table over? What were you doing to make it fall?”

“I was thinking I was so strong.”

Albus furrowed his brow. “So you lifted it up?”

“No, I was thinking about lifting up all the way to the sky,” Finnigan said. “And it went… _BOOM._ ”

 _Oh_.  

“Oh. It was accidental magic,” Albus realized. He frowned. He scooted closer. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry for yelling at you.” Albus was struggling to locate the right words. He figured he probably needed to make this into a teaching moment, but he wasn’t sure how. “You can go back now. Just…don’t lift heavy things or imagine lifting heavy things if your sister is underneath them, okay? Because it could slip or fall and hurt her.”

Finnigan paused. He seemed to be considering Albus’s new rule.

“But what if she’s stuck? Under something heavy?” 

Albus faltered. “Well…then…come and get an adult.”

“What if there’s no adult?”

“Why wouldn’t there be an adult?” Albus demanded. He was growing a bit impatient.

“Maybe the adult is buying fruit or milk.”

“Then another adult would be watching you lot,” Albus said shortly. He pulled at the duvet. “C’mon, out you come. It’s nearly bedtime.”

Finnigan fought his way out of the duvet, but as soon as Albus saw his thoughtful expression, he knew Finnigan was not done hypothesizing.

“But what if _all_ the adults are gone?” Finnigan persisted.

Albus reached forward and plucked a wayward feather that’d escaped from the duvet from Finnigan’s dark hair. He offered him his hand a moment later. Finnigan took it.

“Where would all the adults be?” Albus asked. He helped Finnigan down from the bed. Delilah was still mouthing his shoulder, but it was keeping her content, so he didn’t dare move her. He and Finnigan set off towards the living room, hand-in-hand.

“Uhm…maybe…they are all getting milk and apples.”

“ _All_ of them? Won’t the grocers run out of apples?”

“No…they sent him letters before. So he could get all the things right just for them. So can I?”

“Can you what?”

“Can I lift heavy things if my sister is under them and all the grown-ups are buying milk and fruit?”

Albus had to admit that this was the last question he ever thought he’d be asked.

“Er…sure. Yeah, Finnigan. You may.”

Finnigan beamed happily, and as they reentered the living room, the first thing he said was: “Scorpy, I can lift things up if you and Alby go get milk.”

Scorpius furrowed his brow. “Why would we need to get milk? Oh, no…you haven’t busted the bottles in the freezer bag, have you?! Nora and James are definitely on the boat by now!”

“No!” Albus said quickly. “No, just—don’t worry about it. Really. It’s just…S-I-L-L-Y.”

“Silly,” Evra said at once. She had changed into her nightie while Albus was gone. She was tiredly rubbing the worn fur of her teddy bear against her cheek. “That spells silly.”

“Clever girl,” Albus and Scorpius chorused. They shared a grin afterwards.

“All right,” Albus said, suddenly very eager for his own bedtime. “It’s time for bed! Let’s get pajamas on and your toys from your bags…Henry…” Henry had triumphantly pulled two pieces of clothing from his suitcase without really looking at them and was trying his hardest to pull pajama bottoms over his head. Albus caught Scorpius struggling not to laugh. “No, Henry, you need a top and a bottom, not two bottoms…here, let me help…”

Once Henry and Finnigan were in pajamas, Albus escorted the three eldest kids down the hall to the guest room they were staying in. He and Scorpius had decided to leave the first open for Lily, as she typically stayed there when she visited London, and they had no idea when she might show up. Albus spent an annoying fifteen minutes playing a dizzying back-and-forth game of water-fetching and last minute toilet adventures, but finally, all three were settled into the giant bed, tiredly cuddling their stuffed toys. Albus rose from the bed with a relieved sigh.

“All right,” he said. “Night!”

With that, he straightened the duvet one last time and set off towards the door. He’d only just closed it after himself when all three began crying. He sighed and sagged against the hallway wall. He saw Scorpius step into the hall from the corner of his eye. He glanced over at him; he was cradling Delilah in his left arm while his right held the bottle steady for her. He and Albus grimaced.

“Should we let them cry it out?” Albus asked uncertainly.

“I don’t think these kids are really the ‘cry it out’ sort…” Scorpius admitted. “Let’s go in together.”

“Okay,” Albus sighed. He took a moment to yawn and rub over his heavy eyelids and then he reopened the door. The light from the hall fell over the bed. He could make out three sets of wide, terrified, tear-filled eyes. The complaints began at once.

“I want my mummy!” Finnigan sobbed at once.

“I didn’t have my bath!”

“I want pet dragonfly!” Henry demanded. He hiccupped loudly afterwards. Albus looked at Scorpius, bemused.

“Er…what?” Albus said. He walked over and sat beside Henry. “Pet…dragonfly? Do you have another toy? Did we leave one in the suitcase?”

Henry’s bottom lip quivered. “My music,” he sniffled, on the edge of a full meltdown. “I want my music!” Albus felt panic beginning to set in.

“No, don’t cry, it’s okay…Evra, what is he talking about?”

She’d succumbed to nearly silent tears without Albus noticing. She looked up from her tiny hands, where she’d been hiding her face. “Mummy plays him the record with the song about the pet dragonfly,” she managed, and then she was back to sobbing into her hands for James.

“I’ll get it,” Scorpius said at once. “I wondered why they put a muggle record and record player into the bag…be right back; I’ll put Delilah back in her cot while I’m out there, too…”

“No!” Albus yelped. “ _Don’t leave me—_ oh, bugger.”

It was too late. Scorpius had set off in a run and had already left the room by the time Albus blurted his request. He looked from Henry (who was still considering throwing a tantrum), to Evra (who looked absolutely pitiful and heartbroken), to Finnigan (who was eyeing the window with suspicious concentration, as if considering making a run for it to locate his mum). Albus suddenly regretted his earlier thought. This was probably going to be _more_ difficult than James and Nora had let on.

“Henry, your…pet dragonfly music will be here soon. Evra, it’s okay, you can have a bath in the morning or tomorrow night. Finnigan…right now, I miss my mum, too.”

Albus’s mum would’ve known what to do. She would’ve had all three giggling themselves to sleep, happy and content. When Albus had imagined his nieces’ and nephews’ visit, he’d envisioned a similar picture…he’d hoped he’d be as good at taking care of kids as his mum (and most of his family members, actually) were. But he was beginning to realize that he wasn’t that great at it…and certainly not as good as he’d assumed he’d be from all the short babysitting jobs he’d done for James and Nora over the years. Watching them overnight was much harder than watching them for an hour or so.

“I c-c-can’t,” Evra persisted. She pulled hard at her hair; her anxiety was vivid and obvious. “I always have my bath at _night_! Mummy combs my hair and Daddy sings to me!”

“Well, it’s too late for a bath, but I can comb it while we wait for the record player,” Albus suggested.

For whatever reason, that only upset her more. She blubbered something about combing being for bath time _only_ and her dad’s ‘Bye-Bye Tricky Tangles’ song (something Albus would’ve _loved_ to have heard; he was certain it would make great blackmail material against James). Albus realized halfway through her spiel that half her distress was almost certainly from over exhaustion. If he let her have a bath, she’d probably fall asleep in the tub.

What made him feel better when he was so tired that every small anxiety exploded into tragedy? When he was younger, it was his mum and dad, hugging him and reassuring him. Now it was Scorpius, through kisses and comforting touches. Albus wasn’t sure if it was him Evra wanted reassurance from…she seemed insistent about wanting James, and Albus was afraid she’d push him away (it’d hurt more than he’d ever admit to anybody). But she was deeply upset, and Albus knew she needed somebody, so he scooted closer towards her and opened his arms. He’d only been waiting for perhaps a second before she moved over into his embrace. She pressed her face into his shirt as she cried.

“When will they be back?” she asked.

“Soon,” Albus replied, not wanting to tell her the real answer. Knowing that she had three more days without them would surely only make her feel worse. “It’s going to be okay, Evra. I promise. They’ll come back, and when they do, you can tell them all about the fun things you did while they were gone.”

“And hug them and kiss them?”

“Yes—and hug them and kiss them,” Albus affirmed.

She yawned deeply. Albus reclined back and let his head fall to the pillow. Evra snuggled up into the circle of his arms. A few minutes later, once Scorpius had returned and started Henry’s ‘pet dragonfly’ song, Henry snuggled up to Albus’s back. Finnigan was the only one left glaring at the window and pouting.

“Finnigan,” Scorpius said. He walked over to Finnigan’s side of the bed. He looked down at their nephew’s dedicated pout and sighed. “Let’s go to sleep, okay?”

“No,” Finnigan said.

 _Well, it was worth a try, Scorpius,_ Albus thought.

“Why not?”

“Because I want Mummy.”

“Mummy’s on a boat; she doesn’t even know you’re standing there pouting, so she won’t come just because you are,” Albus supplied, in an attempt to be helpful. It was not helpful. Finnigan snapped his head in Albus’s direction. His skin looked paler than usual, though that could’ve been from the blanching moonlight.

“On a _boat_?!” he yelped, horrified. “A _boat that can sink_?!”

 _Oh, bollocks._ Albus grimaced and looked helplessly at Scorpius. Luckily, Scorpius didn’t appear worried. He took a deep breath and began, in an endearingly adorable sing-song voice: “Finnigan Binnigan Linnigan…refused to go…sleep-again, he pouted and he stamped and he made quite a fuss, all because his parents left on a...water bus!!”  

Finnigan giggled. Scorpius fell down onto the bed heavily, so that Finnigan bounced up in the air slightly. His giggles continued.

“What are you so worried about?” Scorpius asked. He plopped back against the pillows and waited for Finnigan to respond. Finnigan—like his siblings—wasted no time curling up to Scorpius’s side. “Are you worried that they won’t come back?”

Finnigan didn’t respond.

“They’ll come back,” Scorpius said. He gently patted Finnigan’s back. “It’s okay to miss them. I miss my mummy all the time.”

Finnigan reached for his stuffed elk. He cuddled it close. His eyes drifted shut as he finally gave into a yawn.

“Big-hole missing?” Finnigan asked.

 _Merlin,_ Albus realized, _these kids are weird._

“What is that?” Scorpius asked patiently.

“When you miss them and it’s like a hole right here,” Finnigan said. He thumped over Scorpius’s heart. Albus felt his own throat narrow slightly. He reached behind him and gently patted Henry’s hair, but going by Henry’s silence and deep breathing, he’d already been lulled to sleep by his eclectic muggle ‘lullaby’.

“Oh!” Scorpius said. “Yes. Exactly like that. It hurts, huh? It’s not fun.”

“No,” Finnigan agreed. “Not fun.”

“But the good news is that it’s temporary. That means it won’t last forever. It will be over very quickly. Mummy and Daddy will be back.”

Finnigan gave another yawn. He was teetering on the edge of sleep. “Will your mummy be back soon?”

Albus lifted up slightly and peered over Evra. Scorpius had his chin against Finnigan’s hair, and his eyes were shut, but Albus saw a muscle jump in his jaw for a quick moment. He took a few moments to respond.

“One day,” Scorpius finally said. Albus had wondered how he’d answer that one without lying or upsetting Finnigan more, but he needn’t worry; Scorpius always knew what to say.

“You’ll be so happy…” Finnigan said, his words growing thick and slurred as he drifted off to sleep.

“Yeah,” Scorpius agreed. “I will be.”

* * *

He and Scorpius stood in the opened doorway, watching Evra, Finnigan, and Henry snoozing peacefully. Albus couldn’t stop grinning. His chest felt full.

“Look at that,” he whispered. “That actually wasn’t so bad.”

“No,” Scorpius agreed, an equally large smile in place. “No, I think we did a great job. Look how peaceful they are. How cozy and safe.”

Albus got an unbidden mental image of him and Scorpius standing in this same place, but instead of their nieces and nephews snoozing in the guest best, there was a baby in a cot. Their baby. He felt his heart jump. He leaned over and rested his head against Scorpius’s shoulder; his hand sought out Scorpius’s.

“What?” Scorpius asked, his smile still audible.

“I just think we’d be good at this parenting thing, is all,” Albus supplied. He was feeling too sentimental to mask the excitement flowing through his words.

“Yeah,” Scorpius agreed. There was equal excitement brimming in his. “We would.”

They curled up together on the sofa for the next hour, not wanting to go into their bedroom until they were completely ready for bed, in fear of waking Delilah. Albus brushed his fingers idly through Scorpius’s hair as he worked steadily through the first page of his report rewrite. Scorpius—stretched out on the couch, his head in Albus’s lap and his feet on the arm rest—was reading another muggle medical book, his lip caught between his teeth in concentration.

“Listen to this,” he prompted. “The muggles can take eggs out of women, sperm from men, mix the two together in a laboratory, create an embryo, and then put that embryo right back into the mother, who can then carry the baby to term and give birth normally. They say magic is the best thing, but I don’t know, Al. That’s pretty amazing.”

Albus honestly couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of that. He supposed it was cool, but he wasn’t sure he believed that it was something that actually happened. Maybe Scorpius had accidentally picked up a fiction novel.

“Seems excessive. Why not just have sex like everybody else does?”

“Because that doesn’t work for some people!” Scorpius insisted. He sat up and peered intently at Albus. Albus was taken aback by his seriousness. “Some people can’t get pregnant on their own. Some people have genetic disorders that impact which embryos are viable. _Some_ couples are two girls or two boys and _can’t_ just make love and have a baby.”

Albus blinked. _Oh_.

Uneasiness took over Scorpius’s expression. His cheeks pinked. He averted his eyes. He began fiddling nervously with his clothing.

“Like…us?” Albus dared to ask. “Couples like…us?”

“Or—or Rose and Iset,” Scorpius hurriedly said. He was trying too hard to make his voice sound casual. “Couples like them, too. I just thought it was…a…mildly interesting…factoid. Your very own Scorpius factoid of the day! So if one day…if one day somebody says…’name one type of medical procedure they have in the muggle world that they don’t have here or I’ll kill you’…you’ll be able to tell them all about this and it’ll end up saving your life, so. So you’re welcome.”

Scorpius was out of breath after his rant. He lowered his head back into Albus’s lap, but his posture was tense. He lifted his book up—almost certainly so Albus couldn’t see his expression. Albus reached down and touched his husband’s cheeks. He was so embarrassed he nearly felt feverish.

“Or couples like us,” Albus persisted, his words soft. He wanted to continue on. He could feel the words perched on the edge of his tongue. But he failed to muster the courage required to speak about it.

“Yeah…” Scorpius said. He sneaked a glance at Albus expression. He was searching him for something, but Albus wasn’t sure what. He was too busy trying to keep from saying too much (or admitting to the dreams he’d been hiding for months now).

Thankfully (or maybe even unthankfully—Albus still wasn’t sure how he felt), Delilah began wailing a few seconds afterwards.

It was probably going to be a long night.

* * *

 

It was one of the _longest_ nights Albus had ever had.

He rocked Delilah back to sleep in the living room, set her back to sleep in her cot, and then he and Scorpius curled up for a measly _hour_ of sleep. Delilah woke them again with the same pitiful sounding sobs. Scorpius took her this time. Albus drifted in and out of sleep, his mind switching between half-conscious dreams and anxieties about the baby. Was something wrong with her? Had he somehow managed to do something wrong in the little time he’d had her alone?

“Albus,” Scorpius hissed.

Albus sat straight up, his heart pounding erratically. “What? What? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, it’s just…look at this,” Scorpius said. “ _Lumos_.”

Albus squinted against the bright light. Scorpius sat beside him on the bed, shifted Delilah to his other arm, and then shone the light from his wand on a thick stack of parchment on his lap. On the cover page, in James’s writing, it said: POTTER KID INSTRUCTIONS.

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me,” Albus groaned.

“It’s all here. The record player, what song to sing to Delilah to get her to settle down. They even wrote that Finnigan shouldn’t be trusted around furniture that isn’t nailed down because he keeps accidentally levitating heavy objects! Apparently one of Nora’s muggle uncles let Finnigan watch a ‘superhero’ film a few weeks back, so he fancies himself a superhero now.”

“Well, that’s what we get for deciding against unpacking,” Albus grumbled. “Of course, James could’ve told me he was going to put that in there in the first place.” He yawned deeply and then rubbed over his tired eyes. He squinted at his niece in the dim light. She was gnawing happily on Scorpius’s finger. “She looks wide awake.”

“Much more awake than me,” Scorpius agreed. He turned, pulled his legs up onto the bed, and reclined back. He rested his head on Albus’s pillow. Albus happily curled up to his side. He was certain that he loved nothing more than cuddling up to Scorpius when he was tired.

“I love you,” he mumbled. His words were somewhat muffled into Scorpius’s arm, but he felt a kiss to the side of his neck a moment later, so Scorpius must’ve heard. “Sorry I was…you know. In a bad mood earlier.”

“Don’t apologize… _I’m_ sorry you had a bad day,” Scorpius said softly. He settled Delilah on his chest. “James’s book said letting Delilah fall asleep on your chest will lead to a deeper sleep, so let’s hope he’s right. It’s sleepy time, Delilah…aren’t you sleepy? You don’t look sleepy, but I’m sure you are deep down…”

While Scorpius talked sweetly to their niece (and did his best to convince the infant that sleeping is what she ought to have been doing, instead of gnawing on her hands), Albus allowed himself to drift back off to sleep. He felt as if he’d only just closed his eyes when abrupt pain shot from his knee down to his toes. He inhaled sharply, wrenched his eyes open, and found all three remaining Potter kids climbing up onto the bed. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told Scorpius it was only half past three.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. He shuffled up, to give the kids more room to get on the bed without stepping on his other kneecap. He glanced quickly to his side; Scorpius was still beside him, his head resting on Albus’s pillow. He’d drifted off with Delilah on his chest. She was _finally_ in a deep, unperturbed sleep. Scorpius had his hand resting lightly on her back; Albus could tell he was sleeping lightly enough that if the baby moved, he’d wake.

“We’re scared,” Evra whispered. “We wanna sleep in here.”

Finnigan and Henry had already made themselves cozy on Scorpius’s side of the bed. Albus was too exhausted to fight with them. He opened his arms and kissed Evra’s hair as she climbed right into his embrace.

“Let’s all sleep until at least seven,” Albus mumbled. “Okay?”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…” Finnigan whispered.

“No, I mean, until seven o’clock…nevermind. Goodnight again.”

* * *

 

He did not make it until seven.

An annoying tapping noise dragged him from his dreams, and by the time Albus realized it was a Ministry owl at the window, the noise had roused Delilah and she’d decided it was time for breakfast.

Albus carefully pulled her from Scorpius’s arms, yanked the bedroom window open to retrieve his letter, and then he carried both his niece and his letter into the kitchen. He pulled a bottle from the freezer bag, heated it with his wand, and opened the letter as he fed Delilah.

_Albus,_

_I need a report written by Sunday night. I have included the necessary information and paperwork within this envelope. The investigating Auror has fallen ill and this is a time-sensitive manner. I need to get the report to Hill as soon as possible._

_Young_

Albus wondered if Young even comprehended the concept of taking a break from work. It wasn’t even six AM yet and Albus was already annoyed. In a fit of frustration, he shoved the letter to the other end of the table and elected to ignore it for twenty minutes, but after he’d finished feeding Delilah, changed her nappy, and settled her down into her enchanted bouncer seat, he knew he could no longer ignore it. And anyway, he needed to know just _how_ pissed off to be. If Young had sent him information for a routine theft, that’d be one thing. If he’d sent him information for something much more complicated that would take up Albus’s entire weekend to craft a report on…Albus was already seething at the mere thought.

He put the kettle on, and while he was waiting for the water to boil, he reluctantly leaned over the table, snatched the letter, and separated the top letter from the various sheets of parchment stacked beneath it. He scanned his eyes down the first few lines, his heart sinking. _I’m going to shove this parchment right up Young’s arse,_ Albus thought. He ground his teeth. He had very clearly told Young that he was taking the weekend, and yet here Young was, delegating one of the most complicated on-going investigations to Albus to summarize by Sunday night. The Auror Office had been working for over a year with the Beast Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to try and tackle an ongoing issue with dragon poaching. Over just the past six months, the worldwide dragon population had plummeted by a worrying ten percent as more and more people took up poaching as a way to line their pockets. It all began two years prior, when a rather famous Quidditch star was pictured on the cover of _Witch Weekly_ in a custom kit made from dragon scales, and after that one publication, dragon scales took wizarding fashion by storm in a way it never had before, leading to a troubling increase in dragon scale and hide trade. It had gotten so out of hand a year ago that the Beast Division had to enlist help from the Auror Office, and despite some of the best Aurors being put on the case, it was a seemingly helpless problem. In fact, the dragonologists were doing much more to help than the Aurors were managing; Lily herself had been part of a group of dedicated dragonologists who’d trapped and captured nearly three dozen poachers a few months ago. They’d all been given Nature Conservation awards by New Zealand’s Minister for Magic. It was a success that had led to Lily finally opening her own Antipodean Opaleye sanctuary in that same country, a place she’d refused to leave for months and months, until her sudden appearance at the reception the night before.

Albus could only hope that she was planning on staying for the entire weekend at least. She could probably help him make sense of the Beast Division’s notes—or at least keep him entertained with stories while he trudged through the paperwork. But then again…nobody ever knew with Lily. It wouldn’t surprise Albus if she went home with Caden, made a brief appearance at their parents’ house for tea, and then quietly disappeared back to ‘Lulu’s Dragon World’ (as Evra dubbed it). If he considered the fact that something was almost certainly up with his sister, it was doubly likely that she’d flee without even stopping by the Potter home for tea.

* * *

 

“Wow,” Scorpius greeted. “Up before eight, taking care of a baby, _and_ doing paperwork? You’ve changed…”

Albus looked up from his papers and glanced towards the kitchen doorway. Scorpius smiled at him, the sort of sleepy smile that always made Albus want to snog him senseless. He grinned back.

“Morning,” he said. “And don’t worry…it still took me over an hour of procrastination to work up the effort to start this.”

Scorpius had brought the entire Potter crew along with him. They were still in their pajamas, and Henry was half asleep in Scorpius’s arms, but they all smiled at Albus.

“ALBUS!” Evra cried, elated. She dropped Finnigan’s hand and ran over to Albus. Albus leaned over and set Delilah in the baby carrier attached to the seat on his right, freeing his arms so he could hug Evra. She climbed up onto his lap. Her adorable face pursed in concentration as she scanned her eyes over his paperwork. She turned back to look at him quickly, her eyes lighting up and her mouth forming a tiny _O_ of surprise. 

“I had a dream about dragons last night!” she cried, elated. She turned back to the papers. She traced her finger down the spine of one of the dragons in a diagram. “There was loads of fire.”

“That sounds…frightening,” Albus said.

“No, it was pretty. And sparkly. Can I have bacon for breakfast?”

“Sure,” Albus said. “Bacon it is.” Scorpius came over to take Albus’s seat, so he could watch over Delilah while Albus cooked. Albus pulled ingredients from the ice box and cupboards as Finnigan chimed into the forgotten dragon conversation. 

“I wish I could make fire come out of my mouth,” he said.

“Yeah? What would you do if you could?” Scorpius wondered.

“Put marshmallows in my pocket,” he said. “Alby, can I have one and a half eggs?”

“One and a half? That’s very specific,” Albus said, amused. He glanced back at Finnigan. He was not smiling.

“Yes,” he said seriously. “One and a half.”

Albus had to turn back around to hide his smile. “Sure.”

Albus listened to the children play as he cooked, mildly impressed by the detailed, imaginative scenarios they were able to come up with. Scorpius had to leave unexpectedly to check on his patients, but he kissed Albus and promised he’d be back in five minutes, so Albus wasn’t too concerned; Scorpius never promised anything he couldn’t follow through on. Halfway through the kids’ game of “dragon boat school” (as far as Albus could tell, Finnigan and Henry were dragons at a school that was on a boat, and Evra was their art teacher), he called them back into the kitchen for breakfast. They were out of breath and beaming.

“Scorpy flipped the coffee table upside down!” Evra greeted. She climbed up into her seat and crammed two pieces of bacon into her mouth with an eagerness that would’ve made James proud. “And we put loads of pillows and cushions and blankets into it and Scorpy put a sheet over the legs which are up like this—“ she stuck her arms straight into the air – “and all my dragons can draw trees now!”

“Brilliant!” Albus appreciated. “Sounds like you’re having fun.”

“So much fun!” Evra affirmed.

“Thwis is gwood bacon!” Finnigan said, his cheeks bulging with food. He enthusiastically stabbed his fork at his pile of precisely one and a half eggs. “Good eggs!”

“Yum! I want _more_ eggs,” Henry requested. He held up four fingers. “Six more ones.” Albus didn’t know what he was more surprised by: his nephew’s disproportionally developed food-related vocabulary or how quickly he’d managed to scarf down his decent-sized portion of eggs.

“You lot have _certainly_ inherited trademark Weasley traits,” Albus muttered, amused. He felt a strange emotion clawing its way up his throat, and at first, he thought it was just nostalgia for his own childhood. He had many memories of sitting at the table for breakfast with his siblings. But once he separated that sense of longing, he realized a good portion of the overwhelming emotion was _pride_. It felt good to know they were enjoying the meal he made.

Scorpius returned before Albus had even dished out seconds. They both sat at the table with their nieces and nephews. To the kids’ utmost joy, James and Nora rang on the set of enchanted mirrors right as they were finishing up breakfast. Scorpius leaned his head against Albus’s shoulder as the kids returned to the living room to talk to their parents. Albus stroked Scorpius’s hip as they listened to Evra, Finnigan, and Henry gush about how much fun they were having. It seemed the good morning had put their difficult night far from their minds, because no one told James or Nora about their bedtime meltdowns the night prior. Albus was relieved; he had no doubt in his mind that if James’s kids told him that they were miserable, James would find a way home within the hour.

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun!” Nora’s voice was filled with genuine relief. “Albus and Scorpius are taking such good care of you lot, aren’t they?”

“Yes!” the three chorused. Albus grinned proudly.

“Are _you_ behaving?” James asked them. “No setting things on fire, sneaking out of windows, hiding wild animals underneath the beds…?”

“Nope! Well, I only broke Evra’s ankle, but that’s all.”

“What?!” Nora said. 

“Oh, you _only_ broke one of our children’s bones. Sounds mild, Finnigan,” James said, clearly torn between amusement and annoyance. “Are you all right, Baby Bear? Did your uncle fix your ankle right up?”

“He did. But I didn’t get my bath last night, Daddy!”

Well—so much for the somewhat rocky night going unmentioned.

“That’s because you had it earlier when Mummy got you ready for the wedding yesterday afternoon,” James said, his tone calm and patient. Albus often envied that in his brother.

“We talked about that, remember, Evra?” Nora added. “We talked about how our routines would have to shift a bit. We knew it’d be too late for a bath by the time you got to Albus and Scorpius’s flat.”

“But I like things to be the same,” Evra said, her voice small.

“I know, honey bear,” Nora cooed. Albus rolled his eyes at Scorpius. “But trying new things every now and then is a good thing, right?”

“Like when I drank that lake water!” Finnigan supplied helpfully. “That was new!”

“Not _precisely_ like that, Finnigan, but that’s certainly a thought,” Nora encouraged. “Giardia _was_ new for you.”

“Your immune system probably learned a lot from that experience,” James agreed. “And it was very…brave. Drinking green, slimy water is…a bad idea, but certainly brave. Not sure I could’ve done it.”

“I’m _not_ drinking lake water!” Evra panicked. “If that is what it means to try new things you can count me _out_!”

“No, nobody is drinking lake water ever again,” Nora agreed quickly. “I honestly don’t think the plumbing could survive it…”

“Mama,” Henry whined, interrupting the ongoing conversation about intestinal parasites. “I want to see you.”

There was a bit of muffled shuffling as James and Nora presumably rearranged themselves so they could both fit into the tiny mirror frame.

“Better?” asked Nora.  

Albus could hear Henry’s sweet grin. “Mama,” he said happily. “Hi.”

“Hello again, Henry! Are you having fun?”

“Yes!”

“I’m so glad! Daddy and I love you all and we miss you already.”

“Al?” James called. “Evra, where’s Albus?”

Albus hurriedly stood, so James didn’t think he was leaving the kids unattended. He stepped out into the living room and walked over to stand behind the couch. He peered at the small image of James and Nora in the silver mirror, held tightly in Evra’s hands.

“Here, right here,” Albus reassured him. He snorted a moment later. “You look…red. Did somebody forget his sunburn potion?”

James grinned broadly. Despite his sunburn, he looked so relaxed that Albus probably could’ve called him any combination of nasty swear words that he wanted without James’s smile faltering. Nora reached up and poked his sunburnt cheeks. The skin blanched bright white at her touch.

“I think it’s his worst one in years,” she told Albus.

Albus snickered. “He looks ridiculous.”

“Oi!” James complained—but still, his grin remained. His kids fell into giggles.

“Having fun?” Albus asked lightly. He arched a suggestive eyebrow. The couple exchanged a quick, lovesick look and then joined their kids in the giggling fest.

“We swam with dolphins this morning,” James said.

“They were so sweet and so _soft_ ,” Nora gushed. “You’d think they’d be slimy, but they felt like velvet.”

“We’re going to the casino tonight,” James said. “A real muggle casino! I’ve been practicing my blackjack.”

Albus rolled his eyes. “You’ve never played blackjack a day in your life.”

“Erm, yes, I have. Today. Today is a day in my life. Get it right, Al.”

“How have the kids been? Honestly.”

Albus locked eyes with Nora. He smiled reassuringly, so she’d know he was telling the truth. “Fine—they’ve been good. Well-behaved.”

“You’ll tell us if they’re naughty?”

“I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to get on James’s case for anything. Speaking off…Evra tells me you’ve got a ‘Goodbye Tricky Tangles’ song. I think you ought to share that with the class, so I can sing it to Lily and we can tease you until our last breaths.”

“It’s ‘ _Bye-Bye_ Tricky Tangles’,” James corrected haughtily. “And you only get to hear it if you’re getting your hair detangled and conditioned. Are you?”

“C’mon….sing me the song, Jamie…” Albus grinned.

“Shove off!” James said, but he was fighting back laughter.

“I can sing it for you,” Evra told Albus eagerly.

“ _Thank you_ , Evra,” Albus said. He leaned over and kissed the crown of her head.

“Where _is_ our sister?” James asked. “Is she staying there with you and Scorpius?”

Albus shrugged. “Search me. She mentioned something about staying with us at the reception, but it was difficult for her to talk with all the other mouths she was putting hers on…”

He and James shared an annoyed look.

“Well, if she shows up, keep an eye on her and the kids…I know she says the last incident was an accident, but either way, I really don’t want to come home to missing kids again.”

“Oh, yeah,” Albus recounted. “The Hide-and-Seek Mishap of 2025!”

“Still not sure I’d call it a ‘mishap’,” James muttered.

“It wasn’t _entirely_ Lily’s fault,” Nora said. She stroked James’s face, her touch especially light given his burnt face. “Evra really should’ve known better than to climb into your granddad’s enchanted washing machine. Your gran told her time and time again.”

“Lily told her to ‘hide somewhere interesting’ because she was ‘bored of finding her quickly’, she told her that she could hide ‘anywhere she wanted’, and then she sat down for an hour to drink cocktails with Dominque and forgot about Evra,” James deadpanned. “ _Not_ Evra’s fault.”

Albus struggled to hold his laughter in. It hadn’t been funny at the time—the entire Weasley-Potter clan had spent an hour trying to find Evra once James and Nora returned and realized she was missing, James had an actual panic attack which led to Ginny rushing him to St. Mungo’s in fear he was having a heart attack, and Evra nearly got washed with a load of cloaks before Albus’s gran thought to lift the lid (Evra had actually fallen asleep on the pile of dirty clothes). Now, however, with Evra safely in front of him…it was hilarious. And in Albus’s opinion, it was really James’s fault for _ever_ thinking Lily was up to the task of babysitting.

“It’s a good thing she doesn’t want kids,” Albus snorted.

“You two underestimate her…she can be very sweet with the kids and she’s been a lot of help to me on many occasions!” Nora defended.

“Okay, Nor,” Albus said. “Scorpius and I will let Lily watch all four of your kids while we have a date night tonight.”

Nora bit her lip uneasily.

“Exactly,” Albus said.

“Speaking of kids,” James began slyly, his voice lowering slightly, “it seems like you and Scorpius have really got the dad thing down. Have you talked to him about it yet?”

Albus felt his face heat up. He looked back towards the kitchen, hoping his husband hadn’t heard James’s words.

“Look, for the last time, I was emotional and I didn’t mean anything I said,” Albus growled.

“You did. You so did. You came to your big brother for advice. It happened. Nora saw it. Didn’t you, Nora Bear?”

“I did,” Nora said. “It seemed genuine, Al.”

Albus glowered at his sister-in-law. “Some sister you are…selling me out like that…unbelievable.”

“You sat beside me and you said—“

“All I said,” Albus interrupted hotly, “was that I’d like to raise a kid with Scorpius. Not a big deal. Scorpius and I have always agreed that we want to have kids...after five years of marriage. That was always the plan.”

“Hmm…yeah, it was a big deal, because you said you 'couldn't wait' to raise a child with him. You said you wanted to do it _now._ ”

“It was just an overemotional admission! Delilah had just been born! You know how newborn babies get to me!”

“You asked me for advice on how to bring the topic up.”

“A mistake, since your advice, if I’m remembering correctly, had been to say ‘let’s have a baby’.”

“No, that’s brilliant advice!” James defended. “All our babies except Evra started with that phrase!”

Albus had almost forgotten that the kids were still there listening in until Evra said: “Why not me?! What did I start with?!”

“I believe it was something like…‘you looked amazing during the match, Jamie Baby’,” James grinned. Nora laughed and poked his sunburnt cheek again.

“Cheeky. Was not,” she said.

“I don’t get it,” Evra said, confused.

“Probably best that you don’t, lovely,” James said gently. He turned his focus back to Albus. “You need to talk to him about it. Marriages won’t work if both parties aren’t honest about what they want. You’ll only end up miserable and resenting each other.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It could be that easy. You insist on making everything difficult for yourself.”

Albus resisted the urge to mock James. He felt unduly annoyed (which probably meant James was on to something). Thankfully, James was unable to continue harassing Albus about babies, because Scorpius entered the room. He was greeted warmly by James and Nora, and the four adults and three kids entered a conversation about dolphins (with Delilah chiming in with coos every now and then), but the previous topic refused to leave Albus’s mind completely. It lurked in the corners, as it’d been doing since Delilah was born (since Albus realized that maybe…he really wanted to experience fatherhood, too).

He was beginning to worry that he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut about it for much longer.  

 


	2. I. Burned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily struggles to get back on her feet after a series of mistakes. Scorpius takes on the role of 'big brother'. Tension grows within the Potter family.

Lily woke to a series of all-too-familiar pains. She took a moment to groan into the bedsheets, and as she did, she realized she wasn’t even in the bed she thought she’d be in come morning (her bed at Albus and Scorpius’s flat). This mattress was much firmer. The sheets were all wrong; they weren’t the typical silk of the Potter-Malfoy guest bed. And she had some very tell-tale aches. Lily sighed.

“Fucking hell.”

She stretched her limbs out and rolled over onto her side, her head throbbing and mind whirling as she struggled to piece the prior night together. She’d been dancing with her nephews…then the tall Muggle…then the short Muggle…then the Muggle with strangely massive piercings in his earlobes…then the cat loving one…then…

_Caden._

She felt a shock race down her spine. It only took a brief memory of his soft hands cradling her face at the reception before it all came rushing back to her. The coldness of the stone wall against her back, the bitter, intermingled taste of alcohol on their tongues, the jarring pain she’d felt when she accidentally knocked her hip into the staircase railing as they almost shagged in his flat building stairwell…

Lily’s hands slid down her bare torso towards her hip. Sure enough, when she pressed her calloused palm over her hip, she felt the sting of a bruise. She opened her eyes to inspect it, but there was no point; her eyesight potion had worn off, leaving her nearly blind.  She saw a pale blur where her naked body was. She was able to see a bit of purpling where she knew her bruise must’ve been, but she was unable to determine more than that. She didn’t really need to see much evidence of the night prior, anyway, because the memories had mostly returned. For a moment, she lived happily in the slightly-blurred memory of Caden’s sharp hipbones digging into her inner thighs, of overwhelming pleasure mingled in with nearly obscene levels of affection that she couldn’t and wouldn’t admit to…--she stopped her recollections there.

She would’ve liked to have gone back to sleep; she didn’t know how early it was, but judging by how exhausted she was, it was definitely before noon. Her body was sore in a way that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and she _could’ve_ drifted off to sleep in Caden’s bed…she had many, many times before. She could’ve scooted up, pressed her face into the pillow she’d claimed as hers months and months ago, and sank back into her dreams.

But if she did that, she’d be around when Caden woke.

And if she was around when Caden woke, she’d find herself faced with questions she didn’t want to answer.

 _No_ , she thought. _Better to sneak out now. This shouldn’t have happened, anyway._

With a generous sprinkling of reluctance, Lily inched the duvet off her and sat up. She squinted down at Caden’s shape. She could only just make out the sandy blond of his hair. Her stomach lurched slightly, like it’d been tugged down towards her toes. She thought about reaching over and touching his bare shoulder. Her fingers curled up at the thought; she could vividly remember the smooth texture of his skin, enough that she could almost trick her mind into feeling it now. She thought about leaning over him and kissing his cheek, maybe his lips, it felt like it’d been _ages_ since she’d seen him, she _had_ missed him—

 _No_ , she reminded herself. She only had to remind herself once of the questions he’d undoubtedly ask her to steel her resolve.

She painstakingly crept from the bed bit-by-bit, slowly enough to keep the mattress from moving too much. As soon as her feet hit the wooden floor, she traveled the memorized path to the en-suite bathroom. She groped at the mahogany blur that she hoped was the door, cracked it behind her, and then patted along the bathroom countertop. The bright green, plastic-feeling object was Caden’s toothbrush…a nearby raspberry toothbrush was hers (Lily’s heart rose alarmingly at the realization that he’d kept it sitting here for _months_ , even after she told him they were over, even after she said things she really hadn’t meant in the heat of her anger— _get a grip_ , she scolded herself, _it’s a fucking toothbrush, Lulu._ ), the metal object was a razor, and—

“Ah ha,” she hissed triumphantly. She lifted the wand. She slid the pad of her thumb down slowly and squeezed her eyes shut. Caden had carvings on his wand, too, but his were more circular than Lily’s dragons. She felt along the ridges and dips in the smooth wood. Yes—this was hers. Somehow, even in their drunken, heated states, their wands had ended up in the place they always put them. She leaned back against the sink with a relieved exhalation. Now—her dress. She only needed to find her dress, and then she could flee.

She vaguely remembered losing her clothing in the living room, so she didn’t want to summon her dress, for fear it’d knock something over and make a lot of ruckus on its way to her. But then again, stumbling half-blind through Caden’s flat wouldn’t do, either. She had probably left her spare pair of glasses in her coat pocket, but where the hell was her coat? She was fairly certain she’d lost that _and_ her knickers well before she’d even entered his flat.

It did nobody any good to dwell on regrets (Lily least of all), but she was already beginning to feel remorseful for the decisions she’d made last night. It was messy, and this entire situation with Caden was messy enough. If she was being honest, her current _life_ was messy enough without this on top of it.

She knew it was most likely that her coat and knickers were strewn throughout Caden’s flat building, but she tip-toed back out into the bedroom to check the place she normally set her glasses, just in case. The bedside table on the side of the bed she usually occupied was empty, but sometimes when she was drunk Caden took temporary custody of her glasses and placed them on _his_ bedside table. It was impossible for her to tell for sure without getting close enough to touch the bedside table itself. She sucked in a quiet breath, squared her shoulders, and circled slowly around the bed. She kept her eyes on the mound that she knew was Caden, watching for any shift in the rhythm of his breathing. She stepped up to his bedside table, reached down, and felt her heart migrate into her throat. Her fingers curled around her glasses case. For a moment, she was chained in place, her fingers locked around the case, her emotions surging up her throat like flames. If she would’ve spoken, she felt she would’ve breathed a type of fire she had no business spewing (a type that consisted of three naughty words, words she would not and could not say, words _Caden_ had said, words that had ruined it all).

She eased the case open, pulled her glasses free, and slid them onto her face.

The world came into sharp clarity, but she couldn’t look at him anymore for that reason.

She padded quietly to the doorway. As her feet graced the threshold, words broke through the silence.

“Bye, Lily,” Caden called. He sounded as if he’d been awake for a while. Lily’s throat narrowed, and for a moment, she couldn’t say anything. She stood still, naked in his bedroom doorway, her heart thudding in her chest. She wanted to say so many things, but they all crowded at the back of her throat. She choked on them.

“Bye,” is all she managed to say, her tone much more unaffected than she felt.

She thought she heard him sigh, but when she glanced over her shoulder, he’d pulled the pillow over his head, presumably to go back to sleep.

She stepped into his living room, summoned her wrinkled and stained dress, and yanked it over her head. She had a painful weight in her heart, dragging it down into the pit of her stomach. She realized it was guilt as her hand sank into the Floo pot.

It was funny—she hadn’t felt dirty about what’d happened until he’d spoken. She hadn’t felt guilty until she’d realized that, in many ways, she’d used him.

“Potter-Malfoy flat,” she said, her voice quivering slightly. 

For the second time that month, she was swallowed by fire.

* * *

 

She’d expected to be bombarded by kids when she stumbled into the kitchen of Albus and Scorpius’s flat, but as she shook soot from her uncomfortably short hair, she realized it was far too quiet. She pulled her glasses off and cleaned them quickly on a slightly clean bit of her dress. When she placed them back on her face, she affirmed what she already knew: the kitchen was empty.

“Al?” She called. She waited a few seconds, and when nobody greeted her, she walked over to Scorpius’s fancy coffee maker, given to him by a Muggle doctor he sometimes corresponded with. As far as Lily knew, she and Nora and occasionally her dad were the only people who ever used it. “You here? Scorpius?”

She got the coffee machine started, and once the hissing sounds of brewing began, she waved the highest cupboard open with her wand.

“Can I have some firewhisky?” she yelled towards the door. She waited a few seconds again. When she didn’t hear a ‘no’, she shrugged, summoned the firewhisky down, and filled a fourth of her coffee mug with it. She was stirring sugar into her concoction when she sensed somebody’s presence. She turned immediately, her hand automatically closing around the handle of her wand, but it was only Scorpius. He looked a bit bedraggled, with his white-blond hair tousled in every direction and his clothes slightly skewered. Lily at first thought he and Albus had been going at it, but then she spotted Delilah in his arms, cooing happily as she kicked her tiny feet quite energetically.

“Lily!” Scorpius greeted. He grinned hugely. Lily smiled back. Scorpius always made her feel completely welcomed and loved—it was one of the many reasons she preferred staying at their flat when she was in England. Her parents loved her, and she loved them, but her dad didn’t always take her newest injuries in the best way; she felt a strange sort of emotional obligation to hide them from him when she was at her parents’ house, because it always upset him, but the longer she worked with dragons, the more impossible it became to hide all her wounds. “I was worried. Are you all right?” Scorpius’s eyes drifted down her messy appearance. She took a sip of her firewhisky coffee as his eyebrows furrowed. “Is that…? Lily, ew. You can’t wear that. You can’t let _Albus_ see you in that. Give it here—I’ll put it in the wash, it hasn’t run yet.”

“Can’t. Naked underneath,” she supplied. She felt a sting of shame, but it wasn’t for the sex itself that she’d had the night prior; it was because any mention of it reminded her of Caden, and it brought back that insufferable feeling of longing, and it made her think horrible things like: _What if that was the last time you’ll ever walk away from him? And you said ‘bye’. And you left. And you told him you were done with him and then you ended up fucking him again. You—_

“You don’t have your suitcase?” Scorpius asked. He’d crossed the kitchen while Lily was stuck in her panicked thoughts. He settled Delilah down into her bouncy seat. “I’ll get you some clothes to borrow. Where’s your suitcase?”

“I dunno,” Lily realized. She took another deep sip and screwed her eyes shut. The bitterness from her coffee mixed with the burning from the firewhisky was a very effective thought-clearer. “I _think_ I gave it to my mum.”

“Well, you can’t go over to the Den like that,” Scorpius said nervously. He had a point, she definitely couldn’t do that. Her dad would probably pass out. “Hang on. Keep an eye on Delilah, will you?”

“Sure,” Lily said. She cupped her palm around the bottom of her mug and crossed over to the chair beside the bouncy seat. She made a funny face at the baby. Delilah grinned hugely, her inherited dimple deepening as she did. Lily liked Delilah; she thought she might one day beat out Finnigan as Lily’s favorite. She’d practically come out of the womb with attitude and Lily respected that. One of her first interactions with her newborn niece had been watching her sneeze directly in Rose’s face—Lily had quite liked that, especially considering that Rose had just been nagging Lily for nearly a half-hour right before that.

Delilah reached out towards Lily with somewhat jerky movements. Lily always found it hilarious how uncoordinated babies were.

“What?” Lily wondered. Delilah gave a bossy-sounding coo, her arms still reaching forward. Lily looked down. “My mug? I don’t think you want this.”

Delilah reached forward again, this time with more insistence. Her movements were so demanding that she nearly toppled out of her bouncy seat. Lily looked back down at her coffee and shrugged.

“All right, you can look at it, but you’re not going to like the smell of it,” she said. She scooted closer and brought the mug over. She held it securely, so it wouldn’t spill on the baby, and watched Delilah as she leaned over to peer into the dark contents. She spotted her own hazy reflection in the liquid and paused, clearly entranced. Lily watched in amusement as her tiny lips parted in surprise. She grinned hugely a moment later, clearly pleased by the sight of herself.  

“Sometimes when I look in the mirror I do that, too,” Lily quipped. Delilah didn’t laugh at her joke, but she did glance briefly up at Lily with warm eyes, and Lily thought that was probably a good equivalent.

Delilah reached forward curiously, her chubby finger set to dip into the hot coffee, but Lily quickly pulled it back.

“No, sorry, not for touching,” she said. “It’s hot. _Hot_. Ouch. Burning. Fire. Burns. Burn unit. Skin-regenerating potion.”

Delilah’s lips quivered.

“Won’t work on me,” Lily shrugged. “Cry away. You can’t have my firewhisky coffee.”

Delilah melted into pitiful sounding sobs. Lily leaned back in the chair and watched her as she sipped her coffee.

“Here,” she finally said, when the cries were beginning to give her a headache. She tossed her glasses case onto her niece’s lap. “Play with that. New toy.”

While Delilah attempted to shove the entire thing into her mouth, Lily finished off her coffee. Scorpius reappeared shortly after, a set of clothes in hand.

“Best I could find,” Scorpius said. He dropped a T-shirt and pair of joggers onto the table beside Lily. “Albus is napping with the other three so I couldn’t light any candles…I _think_ those should work okay, anyway.”

“It’ll work great,” Lily reassured him. “Thanks.”

Lily stepped into the living room, quickly stripped from her dress, and then tugged the borrowed clothes over her head. It was a definite improvement from her dress. She bent over and rolled the hems of the joggers up, so they wouldn’t trip her up. She did the same to the waistband a few times. When she was satisfied that she wouldn’t step on the hems and pull them off (resulting in her nieces and nephews getting a decent eyeful of their aunt), she reentered the kitchen. She fell down into the seat beside her brother-in-law. He was trying his hardest to feed Delilah some disgusting looking, mashed-up baby food, but she had her eyes on the bottle resting on the kitchen table, and clearly had no interest in his pureed vegetables. She kept clamping her lips shut as the spoon came near her, resulting in her face being smeared with peach-colored puree.

“So where were you?” Scorpius asked, his eyes still on Delilah. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. I was shagging Caden.” Lily spotted one of her gran’s biscuit containers on the counter. She summoned it over to her and popped the lip up eagerly. She munched on a slightly-stale ginger nut biscuit and ignored the quick, concerned look that Scorpius shot her in response to her blasé admittance.

“Are you two together again, then? I thought things went…I thought you ended things for good.”

Delilah was refusing to even look at Scorpius now, clearly fed up with having food smeared on her face. She was hiding her face into the side of the seat. Scorpius gave up.

“Okay, we tried,” he relented. He reached forward and pulled her from her seat. He cradled her in his lap and brought the bottle over towards her. She happily accepted that.

“We did,” Lily finally said. She didn’t want to talk much more about that, so she did what always gave her the peace she wanted: she was unapologetically blunt. “But what can I say; he’s got a _gorgeous_ co—”

“The baby!” Scorpius gasped hurriedly, horrified. “Don’t talk like that around Delilah; what if she picks up on it and it becomes her first word or something?!”

“Unlikely; it’s not exactly an easy word for a baby to say,” Lily rolled her eyes. “But, all right. He’s got a gorgeous penis, then.”

Another great thing about Scorpius was that he could handle conversations like these, whereas her brothers-by-birth tended to lose their minds or at least go a bit purplish in the face. Scorpius hardly looked shocked after his initial concerns about profanity passed.

“I understand the draw of that, believe me, I do, but…well. Don’t you think sometimes it’s easier for both people just to…let things end? I mean, it’s got to be difficult to get over somebody if they’re…you know. On top of you.”

“Or if you’re on top of them,” Lily corrected. She was considering making another firewhisky coffee. Probably wouldn’t hurt anything.

“Yeah, sure,” Scorpius allowed. “Either way, both ways, one way on Monday and another on Tuesday—sure. But, you know, it still stands. That maybe doing that only makes things worse.”

Lily knew he was right, but she was afraid that if she admitted that, he’d ask her questions about how she _felt_ , and she couldn’t answer those questions.

“Sex doesn’t make things worse. Have you ever felt _worse_ after sex?” she scoffed. She made a quick amendment. “Well. _Good_ sex doesn’t make things worse. And, as I’ve already explained, it _is_ good.”

Scorpius looked unsure of what to say. Lily sensed that that uncertainty would lead to him asking questions about her sudden appearance in England or her burns or her hair. She rose to avoid that.

“Can I borrow some firewhisky?” she asked, as if she hadn’t already taken some.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, sure. That’s been sitting up there since our wedding, go for it.”

 She crossed back over to the coffee machine. As she made another cup, she could sense Scorpius considering his words carefully. There was a certain awkwardness in the air that Lily never liked.

“Lily?”

Lily did not look back at him. “Scorpius?”

“Are you okay?”

It was possibly the question she’d dreaded being asked the most. Lily felt the back of her eyes burn. For a brief second, she was back inside that burning building. For a second, she was there again, and that second was enough to cause her hands to shake. She spilt firewhisky all over the counter; hardly any made it into her mug. She felt her neck heat up in embarrassment.

“Sorry, clearly still hungover,” she lied. She quickly waved her wand and cast a nonverbal cleaning spell.

“That’s okay,” Scorpius said gently. She could feel his eyes on her. “You’re not, are you? It’s okay. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

The squeezing pressure on her heart let up a bit.

“I don’t,” she said.

“Okay. If you do, you know where to find me. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Lily was taken aback by his sweetness. It didn’t matter how many times she was confronted with how genuinely _good_ Scorpius was— she always had a brief moment of surprise each and every time. She wondered how somebody as fussy and moody as Albus had nabbed somebody as gentle and understanding as Scorpius, but she knew it was a good thing that they had. Like Lily’s mum always said, they balanced each other well.

Lily considered Scorpius’s question.

“I don’t suppose your dad’s got another illegal Time Turner stashed somewhere?” she asked. She’d meant for her voice to sound light and teasing, but it came out with a bit too much desperation and longing for her tastes.

“No,” Scorpius frowned. He kissed Delilah’s hair and shifted her over to pat her back. “Anything _else_ I can do?”

Lily sighed. “No, I didn’t think he would. Can I use your bath?”

Scorpius smiled softly. “Sure. That I can do. I’ll go set a towel and flannel in there for you. Your soap from last visit is still there.”

“Thanks, Brother,” she said. It’d started as a teasing nickname after Albus’s proposal to Scorpius, but she’d realized that he actually really liked it, so she liked to pull it out in times like this (when she was really grateful for his presence in her life but wasn’t able to find the right words to say that). She felt the nickname had more power when she used it sparingly.

As she’d hoped, Scorpius gave a radiant beam in response.

* * *

 

Lily was afraid to look in the mirror. She set her borrowed clothes on an opened drawer and stared hard at the tap. She knew she needed to lift her eyes to the mirror and look at herself—she was only going to feel worse for longer if she didn’t—but she didn’t want to. It would’ve been nice to have stopped jumping every time she saw her own reflection, but to do that, she’d have to actually look at herself enough to get used to it, and she hated the way she looked now. She felt naked without her hair. She felt like she looked silly, young, and weak. And for the first time since she’d started her dream job, the burns really bothered her. Probably because these weren’t the sort of burns she was used to—small ones caused by the fire of rowdy adolescent dragons. These were ugly, expansive, and they were created from desperate, terrified fire. Lily knew realistically that there wasn’t any truth to that—the way a dragon felt when they breathed fire didn’t really impact the damage that the fire could do; fire was fire—but the pain of the burns from a terrified dragon had hurt much worse than any pain she’d ever felt from burns sustained while playing with happy, brutish ones.

It took a lot of mustered courage to lift her eyes to the mirror. She stared into her own eyes, afraid to let her vision span out, but there was no avoiding it. She eased up the focus of her eyes and took in her entire appearance: freckles, slightly chapped lips, bronze-rimmed glasses, inherited dimples waiting to show if only she’d smile. Red hair, chopped off above her shoulders, hanging foreign at her neck. She reached up and ran her right hand through her hair. She played with the part, her stomach clenching uneasily.

“Get over it,” she told herself. The roar of the running bath drowned out her words.

The new burns on the left side of her body and her upper back didn’t look as bad as she remembered them. In her mind, they were perpetually brand new. She could easily picture the burnt skin, the patches of missing flesh. The smell had been the worst part; the burns had been so severe that she couldn’t feel anything for a while, not until after the skin-regenerating potion had been applied (and that had been some of the worst pain she’d ever felt in her entire life; the new skin that formed over the left side of her waist, where some of her worst burns were, still hurt to the touch even now). So, considering how terrible it’d been, she was relieved to see that the scarring was minimal in comparison to how it could’ve been. Still a slightly angry pink, yes, but the tattoos she’d insisted on adding atop the tender, newly grown skin helped soften the harshness of the burns. The soft colors of the flowers and leaves made it all seem less severe than it actually was. She knew there was no way anybody could look at her and know what she’d been through. That had been her intention. Aster and Caden knew, of course, but that was because they were the ones who sat with her in hospital after the incident. They’d seen the true extent of her injuries. And Caden had seen the true extent of her pain. She felt embarrassed and frustrated with herself as she remembered crying into his shoulder. Worse: the words he’d given her when she felt most vulnerable (‘ _It’s okay. It’s not your fault. I love you’_ ).

She ran from him and that was that.

Lily propped her ankles up on the edge of the tub, sank down until the bubbles were to her throat, and slowly drank her lukewarm firewhisky coffee. She scrubbed her burned skin gently and her unburned skin less gently. She was _finally_ beginning to feel relaxed when the bathroom door swung open.

“Naked,” Lily warned.  

“A _bubble bath_?!” Finnigan cried. He was not dissuaded by Lily’s warning about being undressed. He bounced over excitedly, his face glowing with a happy smile. “I _love_ bubble baths!”

“Don’t you even think about it,” Lily told him, as his little hands went to the hem of his shirt. “ _My_ bubble bath.”

His face fell. “But that’s a huge, huge tub! So many people can fit in there!”

“And right now, there’s one person in it, and that’s that. I don’t want to share a bath with a three-year-old.”

“Why not?! That is _not_ sweet,” Finnigan said. He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “When you find sweet Auntie Lulu, you can get out.”

It took Lily a moment. “Did you…did you just put me in time out?”

“You have to find sweet Auntie Lulu,” he persisted. He sat sternly on the bathtub step. Lily fell into laughter.

“Oh, damn, then I’m going to be in here for _years_ ,” Lily said.

Finnigan looked pointedly away from Lily. He could hold a grudge and sulk like no other child Lily had ever met. She admired that in him. She rolled her eyes in amusement and watched as he made himself comfortable on the bathtub stair. He pulled Lily’s folded towel off the edge and shook it out. He wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape. Lily’s amused look morphed to one of disbelief as he reached into his pajama pockets and pulled out an entire slice of Victoria sponge. He relaxed back against the tub wall and took a huge bite.

“What the hell, Finnigan?” Lily finally demanded.

He turned around to look at her, his eyes wide and ‘innocent’. “It’s mine.”

“Like hell it is. Where’d you get it?”

Finnigan ignored her question.

“Finnigan. Where’d you get it?”

“Can I get into the bath?”

“Nope. You still can’t get into the bath.”

“Can I stay in here until you get out?”

Lily considered that. “Sure,” she finally said. “But you have to tell me where you nicked the Victoria sponge.”

Finnigan turned around to face Lily. “They had a whole table for cakes and sweets.”

Lily furrowed her brow. “Albus and Scorpius do? Where?”

“No, Benny and Evvie’s party.”

It took Lily a moment. She sat up slightly, enough that her neck wasn’t awkwardly bent as she looked down at her nephew. “You stole that at the reception?”

“I put one in this pocket for me—” he patted his right side—“And one in this pocket for Padfoot,” he patted his left.

“So what happened to Padfoot’s?”

“I ate it last night by an accident.”

“By an accident. Likely story.” Lily considered her nephew as he munched away on his stolen cake. “Well, where’d you put that? You weren’t wearing those pajama bottoms at the wedding.”

“I had them in my pocket. I moved to this pocket,” he said simply, as if it were obvious. Lily snorted.

“See, this is precisely why you’re my favorite. You’ve got nerve.” She paused. “Can I have a bite?”

Finnigan smiled. “Okay!”

Lily leaned over towards the edge of the tub. Finnigan shoved the cake at her face with a bit more force than necessary. Lily got a tiny bite, but she mainly just got a face-full of cake.

“Yum. Except for the pocket fuzz. Eugh,” Lily said around her mouthful. She stuck her tongue out and pulled some fuzz off of it. She dunked her hand into the bath to get rid of it.

“Ewwww!” Finnigan giggled.

“Next time, ask me for a container for your stolen cake,” Lily grimaced.

“Clever thinking,” Finnigan said seriously. He nodded, and for a moment, he reminded Lily so much of James that she couldn’t help but lean over the edge of the tub and give Finnigan a soapy hug.

“You’re adorable,” she admitted. She slid back down into the water after brushing some bubbles from Finnigan’s shoulder.

“I know,” Finnigan said. He crammed the rest of his cake into his mouth, and before Lily could say a word, he dunked his cake-coated hands into her bath water.

“Finnigan! Eugh!” Lily cried, disgusted. Soggy bits of cake floated up to the surface of the water. Finnigan scooped up some bubbles, rubbed his hands together, dunked them again, and then beamed.

“All clean! Bye!”

As Finnigan scampered from the bathroom, it occurred to Lily that he’d probably only sat with her because he knew she’d let him eat his stolen cake. He hadn’t wanted to see her; he’d just used her as a guardian for his naughtiness. She smiled fondly to herself.

“Oh, Finnigan,” she said. She shook her head, amused. “God, I love that little brat.”

It wasn’t until he’d gone that she realized his presence had helped keep that empty feeling at bay, but as soon as she was alone again, it came back, weighing on her heavily enough to sink her down beneath the water.

* * *

 

Lily sat at the end of her guest bed and watched Henry and Finnigan wrestle on the rug. She had no idea what they were fighting over, but it must’ve been something good, because they were really giving it to each other.

“You should stop them,” Evra told her nervously. She’d been happily running a brush through Lily’s hair, but as Henry and Finnigan continued rough-housing, her happiness gave way to nervousness. The kid had definitely inherited James’s anxiety, and Lily decided it’d be up to her to fix that.

“Eh, they’re fine,” she dismissed. “You worry too much. They’re just playing.”

“But Mummy says it’s not playing if somebody can get killed.”

Lily rolled her eyes. Thankfully, Evra was kneeling behind her, so she missed it.

“You can get killed doing all _sorts_ of stuff…going up the stairs…going down the stairs…apparating…eating…drinking water…using the Floo…” Lily realized too late that perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to tell an anxious child. Evra had stopped brushing Lily’s hair. Lily turned around and looked at her; she looked stricken.

“Really?!” she said.

“My point is that life always has risks! And they’re going to be okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Can you see the future?” Evra pressed.

“No. I just know, okay? Are you done brushing my hair?”

“No,” Evra said quickly. “I want to still do it.”

“Okay,” Lily said. She watched Henry aim a kick at Finnigan’s back. Finnigan gave a furious roar, and a second later, about six books flew off the bookshelf along the far wall. Evra gasped. Lily quickly intercepted the flying books with a spell of her own.

“That’s why!” Evra told her. “Finnigan makes stuff happen when he’s excited! Daddy says he doesn’t have good control yet like I do!”

“Well, he’s just a strong wizard, isn’t he?” Lily said proudly. But Evra did have a point; had that been the bookshelf itself, it probably would’ve squashed both Finnigan and Henry. “Okay, boys. That’s enough.” They continued rolling around the carpet. “ _Boys_!” she barked. They jumped and quickly fell still.

“Lulu, when will my daddy and mummy be home?” Evra asked, for the second time. Lily sighed.

“Soon, Evra. Why do you miss them so much?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because they’re my daddy and mummy.”

“But they’ll be back.”

“But I want them back now.”

“Just tell yourself ‘I don’t care’. And then you won’t care.”

“I do care, though, Lulu,” Evra said earnestly. “I care _loads_.”

“Well,” Lily said simply, “don’t.”

Evra was quiet. She continued dragging the brush through Lily’s hair.

“But I _do_ ,” Evra finally said. “I do care if they leave.”

“Don’t care,” Lily repeated. “Repeat after me: ‘I don’t care if Mummy and Daddy leave, because I know they’ll be back’.”

“But I care ‘cause I miss them…”

“But you don’t.”

“I _do_ , Lulu!” Evra cried, sounding very close to tears. “You are not listening! I do care!”

Lily grimaced.  “Sorry, okay, I get it. You care. Noted.”

Evra sniffed. “Because I love them.”

 _I’ve really got to toughen this girl up,_ Lily thought. She was worried about her. She couldn’t see how she’d possibly be able to survive in this world with a heart as soft as the one she had. But then again, maybe Lily had created her own problems by hardening her own.

“What’s this bickering about?”

Lily looked up at the sound of her mum’s voice, mildly surprised. Her mum stepped into the doorway, Lily’s suitcase in hand. She barely had time to drop it to the carpet when all three of the Potter kids raced over towards her with intermingled shouts of: _“Ginny!!”_ Ginny received them with a tight hug.

“Hello!” she laughed, as her grandchildren took turns kissing her face and squeezing her tightly.

“Alby’s making ‘pah-getti!” Finnigan said excitedly.

“I know, I saw! It smells like delicious ‘pah-getti’,” Ginny said. She looked over Evra’s head and met Lily’s eyes. They both pursed their lips again laughter. “Have you lot been keeping Lulu company?”

“I brushed her hair! No tangles!” Evra said.

“Wonderful!” Ginny praised. She kneeled down so she was level with the kids. She looked at them seriously. “Guess what?”

They all three leaned in conspiratorially.

“What?!” Finnigan asked, a wicked smile already cropping up.

Ginny lowered her voice. “Your Harry’s in there helping Alby cook. I told him I would keep you lot occupied until they’re done, but I think we should surprise him. What do you think?”

“Like a sneak attack?!” Finnigan exclaimed. “Yes!!”

Evra was all smiles. “My Harry!! I drew him _three_ pictures today!”

“Three?! He’ll be so thrilled; it’s been an entire _day_ since he’s gotten one from you, and he’s already been complaining that his office has way too much blank wall space, like a couple centimeters of it!”

Evra missed Ginny’s gentle, well-intentioned sarcasm. She bounced happily on her toes. “I’ll get them right now!”

“Where are they?”

“Albus and Scorpius’s room!”

“How about we retrieve them on our way to surprise your grandad?”

“I love that idea!” Evra beamed. Lily briefly wondered how often Evra’s parents praised or encouraged her on a daily basis—she often spoke like she was parroting a never-ending list of compliments, as if she heard praises for everything from brushing her teeth in the morning to walking up the stairs at night. Lily fully blamed Nora and James for Evra’s emotional fragility. Being doted on all the time might make her feel secure and loved and confident—but it would make it much harder once Evra realized that everybody was not as sweet and understanding as her parents were.

“Okay, here’s our plan,” Ginny whispered. “You lot will get Evra’s drawings, tip-toe—quiet as doxy eggs—to the kitchen, and then give your Harry a massive hug! He had a bad day, so give him loads of extra kisses, okay?”

“A bad day?! What happened?” Evra asked, stricken.

“Did he not get a toy he wanted?” Finnigan asked.

“No,” Ginny said, lifting her voice just slightly. “His youngest child came all the way back from New Zealand—which is very far away!—after she’s been gone for months—since Delilah was born!—and she didn’t even tell her parents she was coming or stop by to see them! She disappeared into the night – poof! That was it.”

 _Oh, come on, Mum,_ Lily thought. _You’ll have to do better than that if you want to guilt-trip me_. Lily rolled her eyes and leaned over the bed towards her cosmetics bag. She pulled out a bottle of red nail polish and calmly unscrewed the lid.

“That’s _so sad_ ,” Evra whispered. “Poor Harry!”

“Yes, poor Harry!” Ginny agreed. “Remember: loads of kisses! Off you pop, go on!”

Evra, Finnigan, and Henry took off in a run, giggles echoing after them. Lily refused to look up. She continued painting her toenails.

“A bit theatrical, Mum,” she finally said.

“That’ll be ten galleons for your ticket.”

“You’re a riot,” Lily said.

“I’m an _uprising_ ,” Ginny corrected. “Or a rampage. Or anarchy itself. Get it right.”

Lily felt the bed move as Ginny plopped down on the edge. Lily moved onto her next toenail.

“Where were you last night?”

Lily ducked her head forward slightly, in the hopes that her hair would veil her face, but she’d forgotten for a moment that it’d been burnt off. She didn’t feel covered at all.

“Shagging Caden,” she finally responded. She would have to use her attitude to protect her now. Her hair was not an option.

“Yeah?” her mum asked lightly. She was clearly making a point to show Lily she wasn’t falling for her tricks. “Let’s chat about it. Give me all your details.”

She knew Lily didn’t _want_ to give her any details. Lily hated the fact that she _still_ couldn’t pull anything over on her mum. She had two options: giving in and letting her mum steer the conversation to Lily’s injuries (which would likely lead to an emotional breakdown on Lily’s part), or refusing to allow her mum to call her on her bluff in the hopes that her mum would back down first. And, well. Lily would take a difficult challenge over emotional confrontation any day.

“Hmm,” Lily considered. She moved on to her right foot. “It’s difficult to even know where to start. He’s a great shag, so…there are plenty of details.”

Lily did not want to have this conversation with her mum.

Her mum did not want to have it with her.

And yet—Ginny obviously didn’t want to be the one to back down, either.

“If he’s that great of a shag, you shouldn’t have a difficult time coming up with something to share,” her mum said.

Lily scrambled to find the most explicit thing she was willing to admit to. She just needed something brash enough to get her mum to back down.

“We had sex in the public stairwell of his flat building,” she said. It wasn’t really true—they’d made it back to his flat, even if for a moment Lily had been certain they wouldn’t. But her mum didn’t have to know that.

Her mum arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? Been there. Done that. Two times.”

Lily wrinkled her nose. _Eugh_. _She’s probably just saying that._

“We…” Lily trailed off. She looked up to the ceiling as she replayed that night. Of all the memories she had, the most intimate ones she could recall (the last ones she’d ever tell her mum) centered around much more than just sex. Lily would’ve offered up vivid details about their countertop activities well before she told her mum about the thousand chills that erupted over her body whenever Caden locked eyes with her mid-shag…

“We…did it atop the washer in the kitchen while it was on.” Half-true, but close enough.

Her mum yawned. “Lulu, this tactic might work on your brothers and your dads, but it’s not going to work on me. What’s going on with you? And what happened to you?”

Before Lily could do much of anything, her mum reached over and pulled the collar of her borrowed shirt down to expose her left shoulder. Lily batted her mum’s hands away, annoyed.

“Dragons happened, Mum. Burns aren’t exactly unheard of for me.” She pushed her arms out towards her mum, showcasing all the other ones.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid. Those burns are different. What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Lily. This is not a joke.”

“Do you see me laughing?”

Her mum narrowed her eyes. Lily looked away and crossed her arms over her chest. She was beginning to feel close to tears. She wasn’t going to evade this conversation without admitting how hurt she was—the question now was just how much she’d have to admit to.

“I really…can’t talk about it,” Lily managed. Her voice broke. She avoided her mum’s eyes. “It was…really bad, and I don’t want to think about it. I—please don’t do that!”

Her mum had reached over and settled a comforting hand on Lily’s knee. She cringed away from her, her throat narrowing dangerously. She didn’t have to risk a look at her mum to know she was confused and shocked by Lily’s response. Her mum withdrew her hand like Lily had smacked it.

“Lulu,” she said softly, wounded.

“I just can’t, Mum, okay? Not right now. I don’t…I don’t want to be comforted, I just want to be left alone.”

Her mum didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Can you at least promise me that you’re okay? Or that you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Lily said, but her voice sounded empty. “I’ll be fine, Mum. I just need some time.”

She’d thought that she didn’t want comforting, but as soon as her mum left her alone, she broke down into tears for the first time since the night of the incident. But this time, she didn’t have her steadfast boyfriend at her side. She didn’t have anybody. And she realized it, then. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be comforted. It was that she _did_ —and she no longer felt like she deserved it.

* * *

 

Lily was avoiding her dad.

She purposefully sat at the opposite end of the table, and beyond a quick greeting hug, she was mindful to keep distance between them. She was realistic enough to realize that if she gave him a chance to ask her if she was okay that she’d immediately break down and tell him everything, so she couldn’t give him the opportunity to. She knew her aloofness was probably hurting him, but she didn’t know what else to do. She felt cornered by her family’s suffocating concern.

Lily was quiet for the majority of dinner. She enjoyed listening to Finnigan’s animated commentary on his ‘pah-getti’ that went on for ages. And when Delilah woke, Lily was the first to rise. She took a bottle from Scorpius and retreated to the back of the flat, where she fed Delilah listlessly and struggled not to think about all the things she was avoiding. That was precisely where she was when her dad found her.

“No,” she greeted warily.

Her dad stopped in the doorway. Hurt washed over his features fleetingly before he seemed to gain control over his expression. It morphed into something more neutral as he squared his shoulders and walked into the room anyway. He sat beside Lily on the sofa and reached for Delilah. Lily thought about denying him, but Delilah reached out towards him, too, so Lily had no choice but to pass her only distraction over to her dad. She took to picking at the polish on her fingernails.

“Pushing people away doesn’t make the pain go away. It makes it worse. I should know.”

She picked more aggressively at her fingernail polish. Tiny flakes of red snowed down onto her thighs.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen if you told somebody what happened? Would you be in legal trouble?”

Lily’s thumbnail slipped and dug painfully into her cuticle. Blood bloomed at the wound. She lifted her finger up and sucked over the slice, hoping to stop the bleeding and the pain. She felt bad for James momentarily; nearly all his fingers looked like this at any given moment.

“Lulu?” her dad pressed.

Lily dropped her finger from her mouth. She watched the blood bead up again within seconds.

“I’ll cry,” she finally admitted, her voice dangerously thick.

“What’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t want to cry.”

“Why? Everybody cries. I cry. Your mum cries. Your brothers cry.” Harry rotated Delilah and held her up, so she was facing Lily. He kissed the crown of her head. “Delilah cries.”

Delilah smiled at the sound of her name. When Harry turned her back around, she smiled even larger at the sight of his face. She was babbling as she reached a chubby hand up to bat at his glasses. He pulled them off and handed them over to Delilah without a second’s hesitation. She began gnawing on the right temple at once.

“Crying makes me feel worse,” Lily admitted. She looked back at her injured finger; the bead of blood had swelled so large that it began sliding down the side of her finger.

“Then you haven’t cried _enough_. You’ve got to get all the tears out.”

Lily thought that sounded like a load of soppy rubbish. Her dad had been spending way too much time with James and his family.

“You know what makes me feel better? Getting on with life. Not having conversations about it.”

“Don’t get short with me, Lu. I’m just worried about you.”

Her anger erupted, hot and senseless.

“I am _sick_ of hearing that! If you lot were more concerned with me and less about yourselves, you’d respect the fact that I don’t want to talk about it and you’d leave me alone! I don’t want to be comforted,  and I don’t need my daddy to hug me like I’m five years old! I don’t need it and I don’t deserve it and it makes me feel _worse_ when I’ve got it. So leave me alone, please.”

She jumped to her feet. Her dad’s hand shot out and gently closed around her injured hand. Lily could’ve easily pulled from his grasp, but she felt stuck in place. Breathing was becoming difficult. Her eyes were uncomfortably hot, her cheeks were burning, her throat felt tight. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat, but that only made it worse. She was choking with sorrow and she only had one option left: crying.

With tears obscuring her vision and a painfully empty feeling in her chest, Lily looked down at her dad. His eyes seemed softer without his glasses in front of them. She pursed her shaking lips. He gently squeezed her hand. She felt her heart break (again).

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“What’s your fault?” he asked softly. Delilah had stopped babbling. With Harry’s glasses still in her mouth, she stared wide-eyed at Lily, clearly entranced by Lily’s outburst. Lily was physically shaking from the effort of trying to withhold her sobs.

“They’re all dead,” Lily said. Her vision shook as her eyes filled completely with tears. She blinked rapidly. They spilled down her cheeks. “It’s my fault.”

She didn’t know if she sat back on the sofa or if her dad tugged her towards it. Either way, she ended up at her dad’s side, her face pressed into his arm as she cried. He reached up and cradled her head to his arm, his thumb brushing comfortingly against her damp cheek. The force of Lily’s sobs only seemed to grow minute by minute. She wept, and wept, and wept.

“Dad, does Delilah need—oh.”

Lily ordinarily would’ve felt _mortified_ to have her brother spot her this way, but she was so wracked with pain that she couldn’t care about much of anything.

“Not now, Al,” Harry said. “Here—take Delilah out, will you?”

“Shall I get Mum?” Albus asked nervously.

Lily couldn’t feel a thing beyond pain, but she knew she wouldn’t want to repeat what had happened twice, so she nodded against her dad’s arm.

“Yeah, please,” Harry said.

Lily cried up until the point her mum entered, and then, once her mum’s arm was around her shoulders, she managed to inhale deeply enough to get some words out.

“I was doing the night shift with the new babies,” she began. She had to pause long enough to blow her nose on the tissue her mum offered her.

“Opal and Emerald’s babies? Or another dragon?” her mum asked.

Lily wiped at her eyes. “Opal’s,” she admitted. Her voice was so strained that it didn’t even sound like her.

“Okay. Then what?” her mum asked

“They’ve got to sleep inside the main sanctuary building because of the poachers…they aren’t allowed to roam freely at night because it’s difficult to keep an eye on them. The babies hate it…being in the building. That night…I fell asleep with them, with the babies,” she said. “I usually do nap with them for a bit, because it helps them settle down for the night, they’re very—” Lily stopped. She felt like her heart had turned inside out. “They were very playful,” she corrected. She coughed against the lump reforming in her throat.  She just needed to get this over with. She needed to get this over with and then she needed to run. “I woke up to the sound of loads of strangers’ voices. By the time I realized it was poachers, it was too late to do anything. I got the babies into a cupboard, thinking that I could stand outside of it and protect them with Emerald, but she just— you can’t really train a dragon, I knew that, but Emerald mostly listened to me and trusted my judgement, but when all the poachers burst in and started firing off spells she _lost it_ , she started breathing fire _everywhere_ , it caught the poachers, the building, _me_ —I was mainly concerned with getting the poachers. I didn’t even think about what Emerald was doing. I put out my clothes and chased after the surviving poachers, and I caught them, but at that point I was going into shock from my burns…I tied the poachers up and went back to the shelter, but when I got there—”

Lily could hardly inhale fully with the weight of her sadness.

“Emerald had freaked out. She was charging around, stamping about…” Lily trailed off. In her mind’s eye, she saw the worst thing she’d ever seen in her entire life: Emerald’s massive, pearly body crumpled down beside the bloody corpses of her babies, smoke and moans unfurling from her mouth. Lily heard herself make a strange, pained sound. “She trampled them to death. The babies. I couldn’t do anything. I tried everything. I held them and I tried every spell and I tried everything but they were all gone. All of Opal’s babies. In such a _horrible_ way…they must’ve been so scared; it must’ve hurt so much. And it was my fault. I helped hatch them and now they’re just— _gone_.”

Her grief was exhausting. She found, after a certain point, she didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore.

“Lulu,” her mum said softly, her words soaked with pain, but she didn’t continue after that. Really—what was there to say?

Her dad seemed to realize that, too, because he didn’t try to say anything. He pulled her into a silent hug.

“It wasn’t your fault,” her mum finally whispered. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Lily. But I promise it wasn’t your fault.”

But how could it not be when Lily could imagine at least five different scenarios where her own actions could have saved the babies’ lives?

If she wasn’t the one responsible, why did the tragic outcome hinge on the actions and decisions that _she_ had made?

She felt weaker than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

* * *

 

She’d wanted to flee the scene after her meltdown, but she didn’t have the energy to do much but curl up beneath the covers, and anyway, she wasn’t sure where she’d even go. She couldn’t go to Caden (no matter how much she wanted to)—she’d burnt that bridge as painfully as she’d been burnt.  She couldn’t go to Aster—she was cross with her over Lily’s situation with Caden, and while Aster would always accept her with open arms despite her annoyance, Lily didn’t want to be treated to a lecture about how she’d mistreated Caden. She couldn’t go to Hugo for that same reason. So she lay quietly for an uncertain amount of time, her mind flipping through a series of guilt-wracked memories. The babies. Emerald. She wanted to Floo her colleagues to ask how Emerald was doing, but she felt unable to face them, too. They’d all encouraged her to take a long holiday break once she’d been released from hospital. Her Uncle Charlie had arrived (after a mutual dragonologist friend had informed him of what happened) and had practically forced her to pack her belongings up and return home. _“These things happen sometimes,”_ he’d told her, his burn-riddled hand resting lightly on the newly-formed skin of her shoulder. _“Some people say it hurts the most the first time, but I think it hurts the same every time. You just have to take time, and when you’re ready, come back. You can always do more good, no matter how much bad has happened.”_

For once, she wasn’t sure if she believed him. But she wasn’t in a very good place.

“ALL RIGHT…READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!” Scorpius’s voice drifted throughout the flat as he played with the kids. Lily thought about getting up to join him, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy. In the end, it didn’t matter; she heard the bedroom door creak open as one of them came to her anyway. She listened to a few light footsteps. She winced as Finnigan lifted the duvet up, sending bright light into Lily’s makeshift cave. Henry peered past his brother, his eyes wide with curiosity.

“What?” she asked them.

Finnigan hoisted himself up onto the mattress and wiggled his way beneath the covers. Henry quickly struggled to follow suit, but he couldn’t get up onto the bed without help. Finnigan grabbed his arms and tugged him up. Once the covers were back over all three of their heads, a silence settled over them. They observed Lily. She looked at them. She was very aware of her puffy face and red eyes.

“Let’s see…are Finnigan and Henry in _here_?!” Scorpius’s voice elevated with discovery as he opened the door to another room. Lily listened to the sound of him rummaging about, and then, “No…not here…Finnigan! Henry! Come out, come out wherever you are! We’ve got to find your sister; she’s really good at this game!”

The kids’ staring was getting annoying, but at least they weren’t asking her if she was okay. At the end of Finnigan’s long observation of his aunt, he reached down into his pocket and withdrew three crumbled biscuits. Lily watched him shift over onto his side, so he was completely facing Lily, his head on the same pillow as her. And then, with his eyes still on hers, he slowly pushed the biscuits over to her one-by-one. A peace offering.

“You can hide here. You don’t have to give me your biscuits,” Lily whispered.

Finnigan glanced down at them. He slowly reached forward and stole one back, leaving two for Lily.

“You can have those,” he stage-whispered.

“Shh,” Lily warned. “He’ll hear you.”

“I’m whispering,” he said, in pretty much his normal voice.

“No…you’re really not.”

Henry had stretched out on his tummy horizontally, so his feet were facing the end of the bed and his face was facing them. He rested his chin on Finnigan’s ribs.

“You sad,” he said.

Lily sighed. “Yes. Good eye, Henry.”

“You cry.”

“Mmm. Yep. But if you tell anybody, I’ll…stop bringing you stuffed dragons.”

Henry—who collected every stuffed dragon Lily brought—understood the bit about stuffed dragons, but missed the full context of what she was saying. He perked up.

“A _dway-gon_?! Mine? Where?!”

“No, I meant—oh, never mind,” Lily sighed. She loved her nieces and her nephews, but kids really were a bit stupid.

They listened as Scorpius traveled around the flat, searching in what sounded like every place but Lily’s room. Finnigan snuggled up to Lily, his face pressing into her chest and his arm going around her waist. Henry, in turn, moved to cuddle up to Finnigan’s back. Lily patted their heads.

“Can I stay here with you, Lulu?” Finnigan asked.

It was terribly sweet. And surprising. Lily wasn’t sure what to say.

“You’re going to Dean and Seamus’s house tonight, Finnigan. You don’t want to miss that, do you?”

Finnigan thought hard before he answered. “I see them on every Sunday.”

“On every Sunday?” Lily repeated, amused.

“Yes. But I only see you….maybe four times.”

It was actually probably a little less than that since she’d moved to New Zealand, but Lily didn’t correct him. She felt the pain in her chest ease up a bit. She combed her fingers through Finnigan’s curls.

“I think you might be sad if you stay here while Evra and Henry and Delilah go. They might get special treats or presents.”

She was sure that the word ‘presents’ would win him over, but he shrugged his tiny shoulders.

“I don’t care,” he told her. “I want to play with you.”

And she really hadn’t felt up to doing much more than lying in the bed, but she wondered now if making somebody else happy might make her feel even a tiny bit better. She propped up on her elbows and looked down at her nephews.

“Get ready to run,” she told them.

They sat up at once, excited smiles cropping up.

“What??”

“SCORPIUS,” Lily shouted, fighting her way from the covers. “I’VE GOT TWO MONSTERS IN MY ROOM!”

Mad giggles spilling from their lips, the two boys scampered from the bed and took off running through the flat.

“Got you!” Scorpius cried, and then: “Oh, no! Finnigan’s still on the loose!”

“I’ll get him!” Lily yelled back.

“He’s on his way to—Finnigan, stay out of my bedroom, Uncle Alby’s in there doing work—where did you go? Finnigan?”

It took Lily and Scorpius a lot longer than she’d anticipated to find Finnigan (who’d crammed himself inside a pillow case) and Evra (who had shown a really impressive amount of nerve by belly-crawling her way to the very back of the narrowest shelf at the top of Albus and Scorpius’s wardrobe—she actually got stuck as they tried to pull her out, resulting in Albus having to take the shelf apart). Things were so hectic that Lily didn’t have time to think about all the bad things that had happened, but once Dean and Seamus arrived to collect their grandkids, Lily was once again left to her own devices.

* * *

 

Albus had almost certainly just fucked his husband. Even if she _hadn’t_ just been treated to some very suspect sounds, Lily would’ve been able to tell from the moment he stepped into the doorway. His hair was still slightly tangled, even though it looked as if he’d hastily run a brush through it, and his freckles were more pronounced than usual as the flush across his cheeks highlighted them. His lips were much more chapped than they’d been the hour prior. It only made Lily more annoyed.  

“What now?” Lily snapped.

He was still carrying around that same stack of parchment he’d been carrying around all day, but it didn’t look like he was getting much done. Lily didn’t really want to talk to him. She’d tried to sit in the living room with him and Scorpius right after their nieces and nephews left, but after ten minutes of the couple sharing periodic kisses and increasingly lingering touches, she had to leave. It was making her heartsick.

“What’d I do to you?” Albus scoffed. “You’re in a mood.”

“I’m—not—in—a—mood,” Lily bit, each word uttered slowly from behind clenched teeth.

“Really? ‘Cause it really seems like you are. Do you have a problem? By all means—speak up; Merlin knows you’ve never been shy before.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ve got a problem,” Lily said, her anger quickly beating her sense into submission. “Next time you and Scorpius want to shag when you’ve got company, you should first make sure one of you can actually cast a decent Silencing spell, so the rest of us don’t have to listen to you two moan and groan.”

Albus’s ears went a bit red, but other than that, he refused to allow his expression to shift. Lily knew one of them needed to back down now—they could have some truly vicious fights if both of them got angry and nobody was there to intervene. Right now, she was feeling self-destructive enough to hope they would duel.

“Yeah?” Albus challenged. He observed her, his green eyes turning cold. “Is this because you’re jealous?”

Lily’s jaw clenched. She slowly sat up in the bed. “Jealous? Of _you_? I get plenty of sex, Albus, with whoever I want. I don’t need to envy your domestic little setup.”

“I wasn’t talking about the sex.”

Lily had to work hard to keep her face from broadcasting that he’d hit a sore spot. Still, despite her best efforts, he seemed to catch on.

“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve got somebody who loves me, good days and bad days. And you’ve got no self-control, so I’m sure you _do_ have sex with loads of people. Sex without substance, anyway. At least _I_ haven’t run off the only man who’s likely to genuinely fall in love with _me_ —”

“Shut your mouth,” she warned.

“Oh—tender spot?” He had the nerve to smile. Lily’s hand slowly inched across the sheets towards her wand.

“You can stand there and grin, and yeah, you’ve got a lovely husband and you love each other very much—but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got no damn ambition and no genuine talent,” Lily shot back. She knew it was his weakest spot. “You became an Auror because it’s what Dad did and you had no idea what else to do. And you’re miserable because you’re bad at it. It’s got nothing to do with your sodding boss.”

“You call what you do _ambition_? I call it weak and pathetic. You ran off to be with dragons because you don’t have the balls to be with people. I’m not an idiot; I see the way you run anytime you feel any sort of emotion at all and it was bound to bite you in your arse at some point or another.”

Lily moved the hand gripped around her wand into her lap, so she could withdraw it quickly. Albus’s hand had pushed into his pocket, the pocket Lily knew his wand was in. Her heart was pounding now. Her face was hot. There was pain there, yes, but her fury was much stronger. Her mind worked through every single sore spot she knew Albus had, and she settled on the one most likely to hurt him like he was hurting her.

“I’m not the one who’s got issues with personal relationships,” she snapped. “I’m Dad’s favorite. James is Mum’s. Where does that leave you?”

He withdrew his wand. Lily had moved to do the same in nearly the same exact millisecond.

“You’re such a selfish brat. You can lie through your teeth all you want, but I know Caden left you because he realized you weren’t worth the effort. You don’t care about anybody but yourself and you’re going to continue making stupid choices until you’re absolutely and completely alone. And you'll deserve it.”

“AND YOU’LL CONTINUE BEING THE MEDIOCRE POTTER CHILD!” Lily shouted. She could feel her pulse in her head now. “James is an Animagus and he runs his own department! I’m the youngest dragonologist to open her own sanctuary in _history_! I’ve got two conservation awards! And what do you do besides whine?”

“A hell of a lot more than you do,” Albus shot back. His face was beet red now. The knuckles on his wand hand were white from gripping so tightly. Lily braced herself; she knew he was going to lash out any moment now. “You say you’re such a brilliant dragonologist, but if that were true, why are you burned like that? I never see other dragonologists with burns that extensive. Uncle Charlie’s aren’t like that. You look like you’re some silly little girl who got thrown into a ring with dragons. Maybe because you are?”

“ _Locomotor Wibbly_!”

“ _Protego!”_

The spell rebounded off Albus’s shield and crashed back against the far wall, hitting a lamp and shattering it into pieces. Lily’s vision was blurring from behind angry tears.

“ _Anteoculatia!”_

 _“PROTEGO!”_ he countered again, furious.

“ _Titillando!”_

“ _Stupefy!”_

Lily flattened herself to the bed so his stunning spell flew over her head. A moment later, Scorpius came running into the bedroom.

“What is going on?! Al? Lily?”

Albus didn’t take his eyes off Lily. She didn’t take hers off him, either. They were both readying to shoot off another hex when Scorpius threw himself between them, his arms outstretched and his face paling.

“ _Stop_!” he bellowed. It was the angriest Lily had ever heard Scorpius sound. The foreignness of it made her pause. “What are you two fighting about?! Albus—stop! Put your wand away!”

“But—”

“Put it _away_!”

Albus glowered at his husband, but after a long moment, he reluctantly pushed his wand back into his pocket. Scorpius turned to look at Lily, his eyebrows raised.

“Lily.”

She pulled up her fingers one by one. Her wand fell from her sweaty palm onto the duvet. She and Albus glowered at each other, both red-faced and out of breath.

“Get out of my flat,” Albus told her, his voice icy.

“Albus,” Scorpius said incredulously. “What is going on?! What are you two fighting over?!”

Silence. Scorpius looked from Lily to Albus. Lily was too embarrassed to admit that she couldn’t remember what their initial annoyance had been over.

“Didn’t you hear me?! Get out! You’re not welcome!”

“Fine,” Lily spat. She flung the duvet off her. “Fuck you and fuck your flat.”

“Well, fuck you, too!” Albus said back.

“ _Whoa_ ,” Scorpius said. “Both of you just hold on a moment! This is ridiculous!”

“No! I want her out!”

“It’s my flat, too! And I want to know what’s going on!” Scorpius argued.

For a moment, Lily thought Albus was going to fight him on it. But after a long moment, Albus walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Scorpius remained standing, his mouth set into a fine line.

“What _happened_?” he repeated slowly.

Lily didn’t want to repeat the things Albus had said because they were things she felt extremely vulnerable about. Albus was equally unwilling to repeat what Lily had said to him.

“We were arguing. She’s…mean, Scorpius.”

Albus clearly didn’t intend to sound like a sulky five-year-old, but that’s exactly what he sounded like. He even crossed his arms over his chest after he spoke.

“No,” Lily countered. “ _He’s_ mean!”

“So you were both mean to each other.”

“No! She was mean first!”

“ _No_! _You_ were mean first!”

“Liar! You sodding liar!”

“ _You’re_ a liar!”

“Stop it, both of you!”

Lily and Albus fell silent again.

“You’ve both got a habit of saying things you don’t really mean when you’re angry.”

“I do _not_ —”

“Albus. Come on.”

Albus looked away.

“I think you two ought to hug and make up,” Scorpius continued.

Lily and Albus exchanged a disgusted look.

“Yeah, _that’s_ likely,” Albus said, sarcasm dripping from his words.

“Only if you literally kill me and wrap my dead arms around his body,” Lily spat back.

Scorpius sighed.

“There’s really no need to be so nasty to each other,” Scorpius said. He sounded wounded. For the first time, Lily felt guilty. When she glanced at her brother, he looked guilty, too. “We’ve all got enough going on without purposefully hurting each other, too. What’s the point in that? Family should support each other; family shouldn’t make things worse.”

Lily looked down at her lap. She heard Albus sigh. She dug her next words out with significant effort.

“What I said about you being mediocre isn’t true…you’ve been through loads of stuff that most people wouldn’t have survived. And…you must be a decent enough Auror, because you deflected my spells rather well. And Mum and Dad switch favorites weekly, so what I said about that doesn’t really mean much.”

Albus didn’t say anything for a long moment. Scorpius nudged him pointedly.

“I…recognize that a lot of people like you. And I know that you care about them, too, even if you don’t always show it in the best way. And…I’m sorry for what I said about your skills as a dragonologist.”

“There, that wasn’t so bad,” Scorpius said. “Are you two done trying to kill each other?”

“For now,” Lily and Albus chorused. Despite her continued annoyance, Lily smiled. She caught Albus doing the same fleetingly.

“What did you need, anyway?” Lily wondered.

Albus looked reluctant to answer. Finally, he said: “I was going to see if you wanted to work with me on this report. It’s about the poaching.”

Lily’s stomach clenched. She was prisoner to a quick blur of terrible memories. She wanted to blurt _“No!”_ , but she was already beginning to somewhat regret the things she’d said to him in the heat of the moment, so she knew helping him would probably be the better thing to do.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

“All right,” he said, sounding just as reluctant as she did.

Scorpius looked relieved to find them working together again and _not_ trying to turn each other’s legs into jelly.

* * *

 

Lily mixed firewhisky with pumpkin juice with the intention of only drinking a cup or so, but by the time they’d made it halfway through Albus’s report, she’d drank at least three and she was feeling wonderfully tipsy. She knew if she had even one more that she’d fall over the line into _drunk_ , and right then, that seemed really appealing.

“I don’t understand how they’re _able_ to kill dragons,” Albus admitted. He dragged a hand through his hair. “They’re killing so many and they can’t be easy to kill, can they? They’re massive, scaly things that breathe fire.”

Lily wished she was surprised at how utterly uninformed the Aurors were, but considering their reputation with the dragonologists, she was not.

“There are two main groups, you know,” she told Albus. “And that’s just in New Zealand. Every other area has their own groups, but we think they’re all sort of…regional branches from two main ones. They seem to follow the same patterns in every country.” When he furrowed his brow and bent back over the papers his boss had sent over, Lily sighed. She drained the rest of her glass and poured more in. “In New Zealand, there are the Brutes and the Infectors—” Albus thumbed quickly through his papers, his brow furrowed— “It wouldn’t be in there; these are just the names we use. ‘We’ being dragonologists. Blimey—can I see those papers? What _do_ you lot know? It’s no wonder any and all Aurors, no matter what country they’re from, act like blundering idiots every time they try to assist…no offense.”

“None taken,” Albus scoffed. He pushed his papers over towards her, apparently unconcerned with the words CLASSIFIED printed up top. “I hate the Aurors that landed this assignment.”

Lily bent over the thick stack and scanned through them. It didn’t take much examination to realize they hardly knew anything.

“Okay, you might want to write down the things I’m about to tell you.”

Albus shook his head. “Leave it to Leonard to do such a shoddy job…I don’t know why he’s Young’s favorite.”

Scorpius passed Albus a roll of parchment, a quill, and an inkpot. Albus dipped his quill in and looked to Lily expectantly.

“Well?” he prompted.

She’d begun thinking about _it_ again; she gave her head a shake and took another sip of her drink. Her head was beginning to spin every time she moved it quickly.

“So the first group was the Brutes. They attack in groups of twenty or thirty. They usually stun the dragon first—it’s not something somebody can do on their own, but if you’ve got many wizards, it’s possible. Then, to kill them, they aim for the eyes and the roof of the mouth while they’re unconscious…they attack viciously, using muggle weapons and curses—anything, really. Takes a while. Sometimes the dragons wake up mid-attack and have to be stunned again. But they have moderate success. I don’t think there are many of them nearby the Welsh reserve. You’ve got mostly Infector branches active here in the UK.”

Scorpius looked a bit green. “The dragons wake up while they’re being hacked at and cursed?”

Lily felt her stomach clench. She quickly drank more. “Yeah. Sometimes, they kill a good portion of the poachers in the process. Those are great days for us.”

She didn’t regret the coldness in her voice. She had always wanted the poachers’ heads. Now she wanted them more than ever.

“So what about these Infectors? The poachers here don’t seem to do much damage to the dragons. At least not according to Leonard’s notes.”

“No, they do their damage from the inside. They’ve been around for much less time than the Brutes, but they’ll be the ones who eventually run the entire game. You know dragon pox?”

Scorpius immediately pushed his hand into the air. “Oh, I know dragon pox!”

Lily laughed. Albus reached over and wrapped an arm around Scorpius.

“I think I was actually the only one who didn’t get it, right? You and James did,” Albus recounted.

Lily had a vague, fever-hazed memory of her mum waking her in the middle of the night in a panic and rushing her and James to St. Mungo’s, where they were subjected to a potion that tasted like mothballs. They’d spent at least three nights there. Lily remembered sneaking from the ward with James in the middle of the night to try and find Gilderoy Lockhart.

“Yeah,” Lily said. “I still wonder where we got it from…”

“I don’t,” Albus snorted. “You two always snuck around on James’s broom. You probably ended up having tea with sickly elderly people.”

She didn’t say anything, because they did just that quite often. James was friends with many old witches and wizards as a child, and Lily did anything that James did when she was little.

“Well,” Lily said. “There’s dragon pox that we know as dragon pox, and then there are a few mutations to dragon pox that we see exclusively in dragons: red pox and lime pox. Red pox is vaccinated against within the first few weeks of a dragon’s hatching, but lime pox was almost completely eradicated until recently. One of Uncle Charlie’s friends in Romania was the first to realize the poachers were responsible; they kept finding traces of lime pox in the carcasses of the poached dragons. So these Infectors are basically infecting the dragons with lime pox—typically by dropping objects covered in the lime pox nearby a dragon’s eggs or water source. It only takes contact with the object to spread. It messes with the dragon’s DNA in a way we still don’t know much about…they mostly seem to lose their minds and turn vegetative before dying. It causes mutations in the young if they happen to be born from a mother who had lime pox but managed to survive it. It’s responsible for many of the dragon deaths we report as poaching-caused.”

“That’s horrible,” Scorpius said.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this,” Albus agreed.

“It’s causing a lot of issues, especially within our communities. We’re all vaccinated against red pox from the moment we begin training, and regular dragon pox has a somewhat effective cure if you haven’t had it before, but we don’t know anything about lime pox or whether or not it’s zoonotic. We don’t even know what it would do to a human if they got it.”

Scorpius leaned in closer. “Is there somebody doing a study yet?”

“Not that I know of. We’re being overly cautious just in case…we cover our skin, use respirator spells, and immediately take a detox potion after touching unknown dragons or poaching victims. All our dragons are tested frequently, so we know they’re okay, but we don’t touch strange ones or the bodies. And as I’ve told you lot: you shouldn’t ever touch anything made from poached dragon scales, because it’s extremely likely that it hasn’t been properly decontaminated. The idiots in the Infectious Disease department within the Department of Mysteries labeled lime pox as a _limited moderate threat_ , because according to them, you have to have prolonged contact with living dragons to even have a chance at getting it. I think that’s rubbish and I’ve told them as much in my letters. If the dragons can get it from objects, I don’t see why we couldn’t. They got rather cross with me…some prick wrote back and said something like ‘owl us again once you’ve had fifteen years of training and education in the area of Magical Infectious Diseases and we might take your concerns seriously’. Fucking idiots.” Lily went to take another sip of her pumpkin juice and firewhisky but found she’d finished it off already. 

Albus and Scorpius exchanged a stunned look.

“Lily,” Albus began. “We thought you were just being dramatic. I mean, we _haven’t_ touched anything made from murdered dragons, but we didn’t think you were serious when you said it could kill us. We thought you meant _you_ would kill us for it.”

“No,” Lily scoffed. “I was being serious. James and Nora took me seriously. They stopped going into many of the shops in Diagon Alley ages ago because they sell things made from poached hide.”

“I thought they were just being fiercely loyal to you and your profession,” Albus admitted. He dropped the quill down to the tabletop and massaged his fingers. “So what can we even do about this? Is there a cure for lime pox?”

“No. Nor a vaccine. Until one or both are created, our only option is to eliminate it through quarantine and hygiene practices…things that can only be achieved if poaching stops completely and we’re given control over our dragons and their health again.”

Scorpius shook his head. “It’s really sad. The things people will do to other creatures for money.”

“Yeah,” Lily agreed. A lump was forming in her throat. Her emotions felt too close to the surface thanks to all the alcohol.

“Have you seen any more of the poachers recently?” Albus asked.

The lump enlarged. For the first time, she felt like maybe she wanted to talk about it. But that was certainly the firewhisky talking. She was quiet for far too long; it was becoming awkward.

“Yeah,” she finally admitted.

Albus and Scorpius exchanged a look. The words fell out of her in a tangled rush.

“Some Brutes came when I was working the night shift. They had way less people than normal, so nobody heard them coming…they scared Opal’s mate. She…” Lily couldn’t say it. But she needed to say it. “All her babies died.”

“Oh no,” Scorpius said at once.

“What? _Opal_ ’s babies?” Albus asked, stunned.

Lily nodded. Her eyes were burning. “Yes.”

Albus appeared to be speechless. He kept parting his lips like he had something to say, but nothing ever came out.

Finally, he said: “I thought it might be something to do with Caden after today. The source to all your…moodiness. I never thought…sorry.”

She knew what he was really apologizing for.

“Me too,” she admitted.

“Is that when you got the burns?” Scorpius asked gently.

Lily nodded.

“Oh,” he said. He frowned.

“It sort of was, though,” Lily admitted. She couldn’t meet Albus’s gaze. She pulled her glasses down and rubbed over her own stinging eyes. “About Caden.”

“Did you two have a fight?” Scorpius asked.

“No. I wish.”

“Yeah, you two are used to those, aren’t you?” Albus said. His joke fell flat. Nobody laughed. There was a voice in the back of Lily’s head telling her to _shut up_ , but she just felt so alone. And it was all hitting her hard all at once: how she’d let Opal down, the babies’ broken bodies, Emerald’s devastated mourning moans, the persistent ache she felt in her chest whenever she thought of Caden (and she always seemed to be, even if it was just at the back of her mind). How much she’d hurt him when all he’d been trying to do was help her. Why did she do that? Why did she push people so far away? She wanted to be the best so badly…sometimes she felt like people expected that of her. She was terrified to let them down. What if Caden woke up one morning and realized she had really just been Lulu all along?

Her thoughts weren’t making much sense. She didn’t want to cry again.

“I went into shock after my burns and my friends there contacted Aster and Caden, because they’d met them a few times. They both came to stay while I was getting better. And while they were there…when I was in hospital…Caden told me he loved me.”

Scorpius smiled. “For the first time?”

“That’s it? You’re fighting because he loves you?” Albus said, an eyebrow cocked.

She realized her hands were shaking. She tucked them beneath her thighs. She wanted to lower her face down into her arms, because her head was spinning, but she needed to say this.

“It made me feel…when he told me that, it made me feel so…vulnerable. Weak. I didn’t like it. I was already so upset. I’d had my hair burned off; my body was…so damaged I thought I’d never recover. And when he told me that…I thought about all the reasons he would change his mind. He only told me he loved me, but I already heard him tell me it’s over. I couldn’t…” She was getting frustrated because she couldn’t find the right words. She felt insanely exhausted. “I was already beginning to feel…I feel like I…”

She refused to say the words _need_ or _love_.

“I want him and what if…”

She trailed off again. She sniffed and reached up to press over her burning eyes. Thankfully, the tears seemed to be staying put.

“What if, for once, you don’t get what you want,” Albus completed for her.

Had she been sober, she might’ve taken that as an insult and kicked him for it. But maybe he was right.

Scorpius reached over and briefly patted Lily’s hand. “Lily, everybody is afraid of getting hurt. Everybody is afraid sometimes to open their hearts up to somebody, because you never know what will happen, because nothing is guaranteed.”

“I don’t like being afraid. I don’t ‘do’ afraid. I don’t feel like me when I’m frightened, and how am I meant to go through life feeling like somebody else?” she asked.

“But what did you do? Just not say it back and he got angry?” Albus asked.

“No. I told him I never wanted to see him again and I asked him to leave.”

It grew eerily quiet. Lily lowered her face into her hands, weary and unable to stand her lightheadedness any longer.

“Oh, Lily,” Scorpius finally said, genuine pain and disappointment in his voice.

“That’s awful. That’s…cruel,” Albus said.

Her voice broke. “I know.”

“And then you…what? Apologized at the wedding? Got back together?”

“We shagged multiple times, went to sleep, and then I snuck out of his flat.”

“Oh, Merlin…”

“I’m surprised he would even look at you again, much less touch you,” Albus admitted 

“Thanks,” Lily muttered.

“What? It’s true. If somebody said that to me…” Albus trailed off.

 Scorpius had taken this very hard. He looked like he could physically feel the pain he was projecting onto Caden.

“But do you, Lily?”

“What?”

“Do you love him?”

She felt a shock run through her. “It’s not about that.”

“Er, sorry. How exactly is it ‘not about that?” Albus demanded. “It’s exactly about that.”

“I’ve got no interest in feeling weak.”

Albus stared at her in disgust. He shook his head, mumbled something Lily couldn’t hear, and lifted up his mug. He looked away from Lily as he took a sip, like he couldn’t bear to see her any longer. She thought that was probably it. She was rising to go back to bed when Scorpius spoke up.

“But being alone doesn’t make you feel strong. You wouldn’t know that, because you’ve never been alone.”

It was the closest thing to a scold she’d ever gotten from Scorpius. She could hear genuine disapproval in his tone. It surprised her enough to make her sink back down in her chair. He was looking at her with wide, pained eyes. Albus had turned his gaze to his husband and was watching him with rapt attention.

“Before I was with Albus, there were only three people in the entire world who genuinely loved me or cared about me. Or even cared to try to get to know me. My mum, my dad, and my best friend, Albus. And then Mum died and I only had two. It’s a strange feeling, to have so little people love you, to watch one of them die and realize just how small your support system really is…I realized then that the day could easily come when there’d be no one left who knew me or loved me—and then would I even exist anymore? And so I was terrified to tell your brother how I felt, because what if I lost him, too? But imagine if I hadn’t, Lily…imagine if I’d pushed him away for good. I wouldn’t have my family now. I wouldn’t be _me_ right now. You have to gamble sometimes…you have to risk losing to win. I know you of all people understand that. I love how fearless and brave you’ve always been…don’t let go of that now, okay? Because I love you, you know. And I don’t want to see you disappear. If you push away everybody who ever loved you, I think you’ll probably do just that.”

Albus slid his chair closer to Scorpius’s. He leaned into his side and took his hand. Lily could feel her throat closing up. She looked away.

“It’s one thing if you really don’t love him, Lulu,” Albus said. It didn’t pass by her notice that he’d pulled her nickname out. It soothed her heart a bit. “That’s not your fault; you can’t help what you feel and it’s right to walk away if he loves you but you don’t love him. But if you _do_ love him…” Albus trailed off, never the best with advice. When Lily looked back at him, he’d glanced to Scorpius for help.

“If you do love him, you need to make things right,” Scorpius completed. His tone was gentle again. “Lily, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

It was then that she realized she’d begun crying. She lifted a shaking hand and wiped at her face.

“I deserve to be upset,” she said. She thought about all her mistakes – especially her two recent ones, which had led to Opal’s babies dying and Caden’s broken heart. Did she even have the capacity to love or care for anyone or anything the way they deserved? “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think I’m probably a horrible person.”

“No,” Scorpius said at once. He rose from the table and walked over. Lily flinched away from him at first, but he persisted and set an arm around her shoulders. She collapsed into his embrace. His hand gently stroked over her hair as she cried. “No, you’re not, Lily. I just think you’ve spent so long pretending to be tough and unattainably strong that you never really had a chance to sort out the issues that _everybody_ has. I don’t think you meant to, but I think you’ve been running from them.”

Two hours and four drinks ago, she would’ve written that off as utter rubbish. But right then, with her face pressed into Scorpius’s shirt, she thought maybe he was right.

 “It’s okay,” Scorpius told her nicely. “You’re my family and I know _I’m_ not going anywhere, no matter how badly you mess up. Albus, either. Right, Al?”

“…Unfortunately, no. I love you about as much as you annoy me…which is quite a lot.”

It was probably one the sweetest things Albus had ever told her. It only made her crying worse.

“You’re right,” she realized. She felt all her pain and love and longing burst from her heart and creep up her throat. “You’re right. I’m going to go talk to him.”

“What? _Now_?!” Albus said. “Lily, no.”

She sat back from Scorpius. “Yeah. Now. I’m going to make this right, like Scorpius said.”

“Lily, it’s late, you’ve been drinking...”

She had made her mind up. There would be no swaying her. She stood from the table. Each step felt a bit tilt-y, but other than that, she felt perfectly fine.

“Yep. I’m going,” she decided.

“It’s a bad idea; you should have this conversation when you’re sober.”

“Who said anything about having a conversation right now? I’ll be sober when we have a conversation…later.”

“ _Lily!”_ Albus said, scandalized. “Using him again is _not_ fixing things!”

“You need to talk to him _first_ ,” Scorpius agreed.

She wasn’t really listening. “Sure thing.”

She could hear Scorpius and Albus arguing over whether or not they should confiscate the Floo powder as she crossed over to the fireplace, but it didn’t matter anyway, because she quickly had it in hand. She saw her brothers’ dismayed expressions as she stepped into the fireplace, bits of Floo powder seeping from the gaps in her closed fist.

“DON’T SHAG HIM FIRST, LILY!” Albus shouted.

Not advice she’d ever expected from her brother. Lily shouted her intended location, threw the powder down, and…promptly regretted Flooing. She grew so nauseated that, by the time she fell out into Caden’s living room, she had to double over at the waist and pant through her nausea. Drinking and then Flooing. She never learned. This was certainly not the attractive way she hoped to arrive in his flat.

It took her a few moments, but once the wave of nausea and vertigo had passed, she straightened. She was initially relieved to find the living room empty (so her arrival had been missed), but that relief turned to worry. She waved her wand down herself to get rid of the soot and dust from the Floo as she crossed over to the clock on the mantel. It was nearing midnight. He was almost always in the living room at this time. Lily looked across at his desk—faced overlooking the street below—but the seat was vacant, and his paperwork strewn over the surface looked unperturbed from that morning.

“Caden?”  Lily called. She stuck her head through the kitchen doorway, but the candles hanging from the ceiling weren’t even lit. Lily was beginning to realize that he probably wasn’t home. Her heart plummeted with a force that made her feel sick again. “Are you home?”

She’d thought her mum and gran’s special clocks had been laughingly unnecessary her entire childhood, but standing there in the silent flat, her chest gaping with loneliness and worry, she realized she would’ve liked to have had her own.

She pulled anxiously at her hair as she turned to walk towards the back of the flat, but it wasn’t as therapeutic as it usually was. She couldn’t hide behind this hair. She couldn’t grip onto it in a way the way she needed to, the way that was embarrassingly reminiscent to the way Evra held onto Honey or Finnigan held onto his stuffed elk Jame.

Was he gone? With somebody else? Done with her? He had the right to be, she was able to recognize that, but even the thought made her want to scream, because all at once, she realized that’s not what she wanted at all. She’d thought her rampant jealousy at the wedding at the sight of him flirting with other women had just been a selfish possessiveness (the ‘Not me, but not anybody else, either’ sort), but she knew now that it was born from an unwillingness to be without him in general. Other women represented a threat to having him. In a strange way she was only able to half-articulate, him saying ‘I love you’ represented a threat, too, because once she fully recognized the extent to which they were _together_ , she had to fully realize the extent to which she could lose him. And that fear was the weakness. And she’d tried to avoid that weakness by running, but upon realizing that she might not get what she wanted after all (him), she felt weaker than she’d felt before.

The small guest room was empty. She shut the door back and felt her heart begin to pound. She set her hand on the handle to the bedroom door. Either he was here, or he was gone, and she’d have to work up the courage to repeat her visit another day. For a moment, she considered leaving without checking, because she knew it would hurt to open it up to an empty room. But her nerve won out; she turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The candles were burning low—so low that the light was quivering and dim, and Lily had a difficult time making much out. She stepped inside the bedroom, and once her eyes had adjusted to the low light, she spotted a shape beneath the covers. Her first instinct was to smile.

“Caden,” she said, relieved. “Are you sleeping?”

There was a pause. Lily counted ten beats before he responded.

“Wouldn’t be now even if I had been,” he said. He didn’t sit up or even glance her way. “Your belongings are on the coffee table.”

It took her a moment to remember the coat and knickers she’d left at his flat this morning. Her heart began to feel weighty again.

“Oh,” she said. She took another step forward. She twisted her hair tightly around her fingers. “I forgot. I didn’t come for that. I came for you.”

Bluntness wasn’t serving her well in this conversation, but she wasn’t sure how to be any different.

He finally sat up. The duvet pooled at his waist. Lily couldn’t be positive, but she thought he might have been crying before she arrived; his eyes looked puffy and glassy. It made her stomach clench again.

“Do you have a bit of parchment?” he asked her.

She blinked. She was thrown for a moment. “What? No, I haven’t. Why?”

“Because I’m going to write down the addresses of some decent blokes who will fuck you when you get an itching, so you don’t feel the need to come here and upset me.”

For the first time since she’d met him at age thirteen, something he said made her flinch. This was not the same bantering she was used to. She could feel the anger and hurt rolling off of him. It made her feel even sicker. And for once, she had no desire to shoot something cutting back at him.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not here to fuck you. Well, I mean, that’s not what I came here for. And last night…” she trailed off. What words would make this better? What would Scorpius tell her to say? She remembered his words in the kitchen that morning. “Last night made things…complicated for us and that wasn’t my intention.”

“Last night wasn’t your fault. It was mine for thinking anything would change come morning. Can you leave now?”

“I…no. No, I can’t. Because I want you.”

“I’m not fucking you, so unless you want to crash here and fuck yourself, you’re out of luck.”

“No—ugh!” she resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “I mean…I want _you_.”

He still wasn’t following. He still looked angry and hurt. Lily couldn’t crack the code—what did she need to say to make him realize that she regretted what she’d done—that she hadn’t meant it?

“Caden, I’m sorry,” she said. Her words were softer and weaker than she would’ve liked. Apologizing always felt like baring her open throat to waiting fangs. She took another tentative step forward. She perched carefully at the foot of the bed. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Silence stretched on. Caden had been examining the wall, his brow furrowed, but as the silence continued, he looked at her.

“If you think _I’m_ apologizing too, you’re mad. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I just…I guess I don’t know what else to say. That’s how I feel. I’m sorry and I want you.”

“You’re still not getting it. I’m tired of doing all the emotional labor. I just can’t anymore, Lily.”

Lily resisted the urge to say: _what the hell is emotional labor?_ She wanted to understand his words, but she felt asking that would be a very bad thing to do. She assumed it had something to do with him being the one to admit his love verbally.

“Can I at least explain why I said what I did?” Lily asked.

“No. Because there’s no explanation that will make me feel any less shit. Either you don’t love me and the fact that I love you is pathetic and revolting to you—” his voice broke in a terrible way. Lily feared tears would follow. “—or you do love me but you don’t want a relationship that’s about love, and that won’t work, either, because I can’t pretend that things are the way they were when we were stupid kids.”

She couldn’t find anything to say. That upset him more.

“Sometimes I have no idea why I love you. If I could turn it off, I would.”

If his intention had been to hurt her, he’d succeeded. But going by the way he looked visibly pained after the words left him, she didn’t think that had really been his intention at all. She pressed her lips together and blinked against her burning eyes. She looked away. She was scrambling around in her mind, picking through words carefully, stringing them around in experimental orders in search of the right combination.

“If you think you’re sick of me,” Lily began, “imagine how I feel. I can’t get away from me, either.”

When had that become such a bad thing?

“Yeah, well,” Caden said. He turned his face away. “It’s not so great being stuck with me, either.”

Her heart gave a little jump. “I think it’s great being stuck with you. In fact, if I had to choose one person to be stranded with on a, like…remote island with no other people and no ministries and no clothes shops, I’d definitely pick you. Definitely. Not even Aster. And that’s not only because I wouldn’t sleep with her. It’s just because…well. I think I might miss you the most.”  

This time, he was the one unsure what to say back.

“I know it sounds…really…” she stopped. She reordered her thoughts and continued after a short huff. “What I said—in hospital, I mean—that wasn’t really about you or what you said to me. That was about me.”

“Oh, here we go,” he said. His words would’ve been full of mocking humor, but the edge of tears still persisting wouldn’t allowed it. “Everything boils down to Lily Potter.”

“Well…yeah. And what I said was all about the fact that Lily Potter is probably actually a terrified little girl.”

He snorted. “I’d like _that_ in writing.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “I could put it on that parchment filled with the names of the men you want me to fuck, if you’d like.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he mumbled.

Lily didn’t want to continue. She felt vulnerable enough already. She didn’t like conversations like these—conversations where she was forced to put her emotions into words. She much preferred teasingly punching people and hiding her affection within cheeky comments. But after all she’d put him through, she knew he deserved to have it put into actual words.

“The thing that happened with the babies…” she began.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Caden said quickly.

“No, I want to. I want you to understand. Failing them and costing them their lives…it made me feel like maybe mine wasn’t worth much. It made me feel…it _makes_ me feel…really awful. And I’ve never felt worse than I felt that first night in hospital. I was in so much pain and I felt so—” Lily broke off. She looked away from his eyes as the emotion overwhelmed her. The utter despair she’d felt…she hoped she’d never feel it again, because she wasn’t sure she could live through it. “‘Worthless’ might be a good word. All I could think about, over and over again, was all the ways I’d messed up. And then you got there. And you—you got into bed and you held me and—” _Don’t cry, don’t you dare cry, don’t fucking cry_ — “I remember thinking ‘everything is going to be okay’ and then you…well, you told me the thing that you told me, and suddenly it was like…I wanted to say it back. But then I thought about all the ways I could mess this up like I messed my job up. And I thought about what it’d be like to go through something like this again but not have you by my side and I…felt really out of control and scared and weak and…”

She didn’t miss him inching closer. She mirrored his action, desperate to touch him, desperate to bridge the gap between them.

“I didn’t act very Gryffindor-y,” she finished, her voice nasally and shaky, tears brimming close to the surface. “I promise I’ll do better this time. I’ll be more Gryffindor-y. I’ll be braver. Just…please. Please give me another chance. And if you tell somebody I begged you to take me back, I’ll lie through my teeth and I’ll swear it never happened, but Caden, if it has to end, at least know that I didn’t mean to hurt you and I’m so _sorry_.” She pulled the collar of Scorpius’s borrowed shirt up and mopped at her eyes. “I wanted to say it back. I really wanted to say it back.”

Up until the moment he reached forward and touched her leg, she thought he would tell her to go. And when she finally did feel his touch, for a second she didn’t believe it. He slid his hand up from her knee to her thigh. Lily looked up at him. The sight of the tears sparkling in his eyes made her want to run for a split second, but she only had to consider how much that would hurt him to make her swallow her discomfort. She could do this. She was capable of doing this. She could comfort him. She could still do some good.

It was like the moment she had the thought _okay, now you can move closer_ , her body went all in. She slid over towards him, lifted his duvet, and slid her legs beneath it. She slid up into his lap. His cheeks were warm beneath her palms as she gripped his face. She brought her lips to his once, gently, and forced herself lean back afterwards. She looped her arms around his neck and held him. She scrambled for something to say to make him smile.

“At least we’re both still really hot,” she whispered. “We’ve always got that. You ought to appreciate that, too. I could have anybody I want and I want you.”

He leaned back and gently loosened her arms around his neck.

“Get out,” he told her, a smile audible in his words. He shoved her shoulder. She fell backwards off his lap and landed on the mattress in a tear-soaked, giggling heap.  “Go on; get out of here with that egotistical cheekiness.”

She propped herself up on her elbows. She spat out the strands of hair that’d fallen into her mouth. 

“Make me,” she grinned.

He leaned over her and observed her for a moment. His smile gradually died down, but his eyes only grew warmer, as if the affection from his smile were leeching upwards. She felt like squirming with joy as he leaned over her and kissed her.

“Nah,” he decided.


	3. I. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Nora get a taste of their own medicine from their honeymooning friends. Between James's anxiety, sunburn-prone complexion, poor casino luck, and mounting concerns about the future of the wizarding world, he really shouldn't be having a wonderful time. But James is James. And he is definitely having a good time.

Burning pain woke him at three that morning. He disentangled his limbs from Nora’s, stripped his clothes off, laid lightly on top of the duvet, and tried to drift back to sleep, but even the fabric folds beneath him hurt his sunburnt skin. Well, he supposed he had to learn his lesson somehow. One thing was for certain: he would _not_ neglect the bottle of muggle sun cream ever again.

He wasn’t surprised to feel Nora’s hand settle on his hair (currently the only place he could still be touched without excruciating pain…the nude sunbathing on their stateroom’s private balcony had been a poor choice). She had almost certainly roused as he’d pulled away from her.

“Are you okay?” she murmured.

“I feel like I was slow-roasted over a fire.”

“Aww,” she cooed. He leaned into her feather-soft touch as she stroked his hair. “You look like it a bit, too.”

“Well that burns my _feelings_ , Nora…” he whined. He opened his left eye and squinted towards her, a smile in place. Her eyes were still shut, but she was smiling, too. “We didn’t make love before bed and now I’m _ugly..._ this is the worst day of my life…I just want to be seen as a virile, desirable man…why don’t you want me anymore?”

“Probably because I love you and you shrieked like you were being murdered when I sat on your lap earlier.”

“Yeah, it turns out you _can_ get sunburned on your _entire_ body.”

“Mmhmm,” she agreed. She yawned a moment later. The bed shifted slightly as she rolled over onto her side. “Do you want me to wake Evvie and Ben? I bet Evvie brought potion ingredients along. We could make something to fix your burn.”

“No, no,” he insisted. He grimaced a second later; as he’d gone to shake his head in protest, he’d made the burnt skin on his neck sear in pain at the movement. “We’re free of magic for the entire trip. That was the deal. A muggle cruise, a muggle lifestyle.”

“Yeah, right, but Jamie baby…even your bum’s burnt. I think there’s probably a Burnt Bum clause in that agreement.”

He peeked over at her again. “You think?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes; I just wrote it in. Come here.”

With some difficulty, he scooted over towards his wife. He met her lips and grinned into their soft kiss. He jumped a moment later as her hand accidentally landed on his hip.

“Oh—sorry, sorry, habit! I’ll get the potion; you stay here and…slow cook.”

He didn’t really want to leave her side, but he _did_ want to feel better. He nodded.

“Tell Evvie I’ve learned my lesson about the muggle sun cream,” he requested.

“One look at you and I think she’ll understand that,” Nora assured him.

James propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at his naked body. His skin was alarmingly red.

“Eh, yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. He fell back down with a cry of pain and waited in misery for his potion.

* * *

 

“Good _God_ ,” Evvie greeted.

“I don’t say that when I see _you_ naked,” James pouted. He had a small towel protecting his modesty, but it was still rather rude.

“You’ve never seen me naked. What happened? I’m paler than you for God’s sake.”

“He thought it was a bit…optional. The sun cream,” Nora explained.

“Mate,” Ben began. He stepped into the crowded cruise stateroom and ran a hand through his suspiciously-disheveled hair. “You look hot.”

Evvie and Nora exchanged an eye roll as James and Ben laughed.

“ _Thank you_ , Ben; at least somebody appreciates my beauty,” James said.  He looked to Evvie and explained his predicament. “It just seemed unnecessary to reapply it so many times when I wasn’t even in the water much.”

She sighed. She opened a black leather bag. She and Nora began pulling travel-sized potion ingredients out.

“You know the words printed on the back of muggle products? It’s not just fun reading material. There are strict rules and regulations that dictate what goes on there. It’s important to read it and follow it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben said. James grinned at him. He walked over and plopped down on the bed beside James. “Don’t scold him, you two, he looks miserable.”

“A state that could—and would—have been avoided had he followed my instructions regarding the muggle sun cream,” Evvie sniffed. “Nora, do you see the chamomile leaves?”

“Mm, yeah, right here,” she said. “It’s rather dark; I’ll get the lights.”

While Nora crossed over to turn on the muggle electricity lights, James reached over and grabbed Nora’s silk pillow. He pulled it over and wedged it beneath his head, so he was propped up more and could better make out his wife and friends. He smiled as light flooded the room. His heart expanded and warmed.

“You look beautiful,” he told Nora, his palms itching to touch her. She smiled a beautiful smile in response, one that only made James grin broader.

“James, she’s in a dressing gown,” Evvie told him, her eyes chained on the small, pewter cauldron.

“It’s her color,” James explained. “I love that dressing gown.”

“I think this might be your color,” Ben joked, pointing down at James’s burnt calf. “Next time, let’s cut little bits of paper and arrange them to spell out something on your skin before you get burnt.”

“Let’s not do that,” Nora quickly said. “I don’t want to have to explain to the kids why Daddy’s got _‘penis’_ sunburnt onto his forehead…”

“I wouldn’t do ‘penis’,” Ben scoffed, with James nodding to back him up. “We’re not nerds, Nora. ‘Dick’ or ‘cock’ at the very least.”

“Oh, well, in that case, carry on,” Evvie said sarcastically. “I’m sure Nora and the little ones would love that. As long as ‘Daddy’s’ not a nerd.”

“Exactly,” James and Ben chorused. They smacked hands a moment later, something James quickly regretted. It appeared even his palm was sensitive.

“This looks pretty serious…looks like it might take a while,” Ben said solemnly, with another jab to James’s calf. “I mean, I suppose—if we _had to—_ we could forget the plans for tomorrow and just spend our days in our staterooms…actually, you know, perhaps that would be kinder…you look like you’re in _loads_ of pain, James…Ev, we should just spend the entire day in bed until James makes a full recovery—”

“Hush, you,” Nora said, her head bent over the cauldron. “You and Evvie can shag all day if you like, but James and I have plans, and they don’t involve him lying here suffering…this looks right, what do you think, Evvie?”

“I think so, yes. You ready, James?”

“Will it taste like rotten eggs?” James asked apprehensively. The last potion he’d taken had nearly made him sick from the taste.

“It goes on your skin, so no—shouldn’t taste like eggs.”

“Really? The one my mum gave me when I was little had to be swallowed.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure you weren’t ever _this_ burned before, were you?” Evvie pointed out.

“Fair point,” James allowed. “Okay, I trust you.”

“Good choice. All right, so, you just need this applied onto all your burnt skin and you should be better within two hours.” She stood after passing the cauldron to Nora.  

“I’ve got you, mate,” Ben said at once, his hand reaching for the cauldron. He yanked it from Nora’s hands.

“Not _you_ , Ben,” Nora and Evvie chorused.

“It might go quicker with two hands—three, even! Then we can go back to bed, Ev. Just get a handful and…” James jumped as Ben lobbed some potion at his thigh. It was colder than he’d anticipated. As Ben reached down to rub it in, James and Nora both shot a hand out and caught his hand.

“No,” Nora told Ben. She patted his hand gently. “No, you’re not rubbing his thigh. Thanks anyway, though.”

It rolled off Ben’s shoulders. He held the cauldron out to Evvie. “Get some, go on, let’s cover his body with it.”

“I am _not_ rubbing potion onto James’s…” Evvie trailed off. “ _We’re_ not staying while he gets his potion applied, Ben. _We’re_ going back to bed. No need to speed this up by violating your best friend. We were never staying.”

Ben pushed the cauldron back into Nora’s hands, hard enough that a bit sloshed over the rim and landed on her dressing gown. She sighed.

“Oh, well, in that case, good luck, James. Goodnight, you two,” Ben said, already on his way to the door. James saluted Evvie in thanks.

“Have fun in bed,” he told them.

Ben gave him a thumbs-up. “If you hear sounds of distress, we’re probably just fine.”

“Noted,” James grinned.

“Oh, God,” Evvie muttered. She walked through the door with an eye roll, Ben following after. James heard her giggle only a few seconds later, though, so he was certain she wasn’t nearly as exasperated as she let on. There was the echoing sound of a dull _thump_ , almost certainly the couple falling against the corridor wall. Nora shut the stateroom door against their echoing laughter.

“Newlyweds,” James said affectionately.

“Yeah, they were definitely about to shag when I knocked. You should feel very loved that they stopped and came to your aid.”

“Aw,” James said. He rested a hand over his heart. “I love them.” He paused. “But not enough to let them rub potion onto my thigh. Thanks.”

“Of course,” she told him. She settled down beside him on the bed. “I consider it one of my jobs to keep other people from rubbing your thighs.”

“An important one,” he said seriously. He flopped his arms above his head and let his eyes fall shut. “Rub me up, love.”

It was—of course—entirely pleasant. His wife’s soft, nimble hands rubbing the cooling potion over his burnt skin. Relief flooded his body as the pain gradually ebbed away. James was so relaxed that he almost missed the loud banging sound against the wall between their stateroom and Ben and Evvie’s.

“Blimey,” James commented, as they heard a muffled sound of what certainly would’ve sounded like distress, had Ben not warned them ahead of time. “He wasn’t kidding.”

“They’re sweet,” Nora said, a smile audible in her words. “He keeps calling her ‘wife’, you hear that? I’m so happy for them.”

“I love the sound of love,” James smiled.

His smile sank quickly from his face as another muffled cry pierced the silence. But this time, they could make out exactly what their friend was moaning. James’s jaw dropped.

“Oh _Merlin_!” he exclaimed. He sat up against his better judgement. Bits of potion slid down his chest. “They’re…really doing that! Naughty!! Ben never told me how naughty they are!”

“Oh. Well. I—I suppose it’s still…sweet. Just a bit…rougher than…sweet usually is…” another cry assaulted their ears. Nora’s eyes widened. She pressed her fingers to her lips, visibly fighting back laughter. “They’re, er, definitely hair pullers. And…vocal. And…oh wow.”

“Okay,” James said, his mouth twisting in disgust. “I think we’ve learned enough about them. Is there a clause about using magic to save your innocence from your kinky, married friends?”

“Just wrote that one in,” Nora whispered back. She set the cauldron to the side. “I’ll get my wand.”

As soon as innocent silence had been reinstated, James felt much better. He supposed he wasn’t _that_ surprised by his discovery; the Sevens had always joked that Evvie was probably secretly the kinkiest of them all with how restrained she seemed in everyday life. He just would’ve rather kept that as a joking assumption rather than a confirmed fact backed up with a traumatizing memory.

James lazily stroked his hand up and down Nora’s leg as she finished applying the potion to his blazing skin. He let it seep in and then rose to help clear up the potion mess. He and Nora settled back down atop of the duvet once they were done. He was already starting to feel better; he could hold her in his arms without any pain at all, and really, that was one of the best gifts of all. He pressed his face into her hair and pushed a hand inside her dressing gown, so he could stroke the skin of her back instead of just the cuddly fabric of her gown.

“I wonder why they like it,” Nora mused.

“What? Hair pulling?”

“Mmhmm. And the…other stuff.”

James felt his stomach clench nervously. “Why? Do you want to try it?”

“What? No, I dunno, I just don’t really get it.”

Nervous insecurity quickly ran rampant inside of his mind. He’d been certain that she thoroughly enjoyed their sex life (he certainly did, and he definitely had no desire to change anything about it), but what if she was getting bored of it (and him)? What if she wasn’t satisfied anymore and hadn’t told him and she really wanted a sex life where it sounded like one of them was being savaged? Could he do that? He doubted it. But, no, he could do anything for Nora…right?

“If you want to give it a go, I’d do that for you,” James told her (quite bravely, in his opinion).

“Hmm…I dunno…I mean, if _you_ wanted to, I would do it for you…”

“And I would do it for you too, if you wanted to.”

“So you do want to?”

“What? Yes—well—if _you_ want to.”

“Oh. Okay. Let’s give a go.”

“What?! Now?”

“Oh, are you still sunburnt? Well, we can wait,” she said quickly.

“No, I mean, if you really want to…”

“Just if you really want to…”

“Okay, yeah,” James said. He nodded once, firmly. “Yeah. Here we go. Kinky. Hair pulling. Sounds…exciting.”

Snogging her—he could do that. Pressing her into the mattress—he could definitely do that. Opening her dressing gown and taking a moment to ardently admire her body—he _loved_ doing that. But as the snogging got a bit more intense, and he felt his mind slipping away, he was becoming less and less confident about the other bit. It was already feeling pretty great the way it always had. But if she wanted to try it…well, her enjoyment was always the most important thing to James, and he’d do anything for her…and maybe she was right; everybody always said that sex eventually got boring, and he’d never, ever felt that yet, so maybe she’d been the one to feel that but just hadn’t told him…

He sought every ounce of his courage, and with his lips to her neck, reached a slightly shaky hand up and tugged once at her hair. Her shoulders went up in a little flinch. He felt like somebody had just sprayed him down with ice water. His heart sank to his toes. He pulled back from her, a horrible feeling invading his chest, his arousal quickly disappearing without a trace. She was rubbing over her scalp, her nose wrinkled.

“Oh, no,” James said. He felt his eyes burn. “No, I didn’t like that. I don’t like that all. I feel very unhappy about that. Are you okay? I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“No, I’m fine,” she reassured him. She rubbed his hip soothingly. “Just didn’t really do much for me. And I was too busy worrying about having to pull your hair back to feel much of anything.”

James rolled off of her. He collapsed back against the mattress, relieved.

“Oh, thank Merlin, I felt the same way,” he sighed. He rolled over onto his side and leaned over. He pressed his lips to her hair. “I just don’t want to hurt you, you know? That doesn’t get me off.”

“No, nor me,” she said, with an equally relieved sigh. “If you really wanted it, I was willing to try, but I’ve no interest in that.”

James laughed. “No! I _love_ the way things are. I _love_ making love to you. I was worried _you_ wanted to try it that way.”

“No, trust me; I’m more than content with the way things are,” she told him, and the twinkle in her dark eyes told James she really meant what she said. That twinkle paired with her soft, beautiful smile quickly got warmth flooding back through his body. He gathered her close again.

“I love you,” he whispered, his lips brushing her neck with each word. He kissed beneath her ear and nuzzled his cheek against the side of her neck. She squirmed closer, her leg going over his hip, her fingers burying into his hair. As he kissed his way down her neck, he felt a familiar intermingling of arousal and love; he wanted to worship her and touch her and make her happy and— _Merlin_ , he almost loved touching her more than he liked being touched himself _._

“Yeah, it’s more than all right like this,” she said, breathless and beautiful.

His _life_ was more than all right the way it was.

In fact, most days, he was convinced there was nobody in the world that was happier than he was.

* * *

 

That morning, Ben and Evvie _might’ve_ been almost as happy as James.

“Morning,” Ben greeted, a broad grin in place. He and Evvie were already in their swimsuits, sunglasses resting atop their hair in wait for the sun. “Ready for some more sunshine?”

“Not really,” James and Nora chorused.

“What?! Why not?! Don’t tell me you’re going to let your sunburn adventure get you down!” Ben said. He shifted the massive beach bag hanging off his left arm just enough for him to cross his arms sternly. “Evvie’s reserved four lounge chairs for the _four_ of us all day long in the solarium, right beside a bar _and_ a massive hot tub!” 

“Oh, Evvie, you should have told us last night,” Nora said, a frown in place. “James and I planned to have breakfast and then go to the shops to buy the kids a gift. And then they’re doing an ice show with an hour of recreational skating afterwards! I’ve always wanted to see an ice show and Jamie’s always wanted to ice skate.”

“That’s all right, it’s not a problem,” Evvie reassured her. “We’ll all grab breakfast and then, whenever you and James feel up to it, your chairs will be waiting.” She looped her arm with Nora’s and the pair set off down the corridor. Ben jokingly did the same with James; once their arms were looped, James made sure to sway his hips the way his wife did when she walked, and he caught Ben automatically doing the same. They locked eyes and fell into sniggering laughter, but the women hardly seemed to notice as they chatted about boring work stuff.

“You made a full recovery, then?” Ben said, as they stepped in after their wives onto the muggle lift. James still didn’t trust lifts controlled by _electricity_ instead of magic, but he had finally stopped shaking every time the lifts lurched to a stop, and he was going to count that as an improvement.

“Yeah, I’m back to my Weasley paleness,” James affirmed. He stretched his arm out to showcase his freckled forearm. “Did you and Evvie get much sleep?”

“Oh, yeah, _loads_ ,” Ben said, to James’s amusement. “We slept for hours.”

“Hours?” Nora asked, turning her attention to their conversation. She looked between Evvie and Ben, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She and James locked eyes briefly and then looked away. “Wow, so you went straight to sleep after helping us?”

“Oh, _yeah_ ,” Ben repeated. “We were knackered. Slept like babies.”

“It’s important to be well-rested on holiday, or else what’s the point?” Evvie added.

The lift _dinged_. The doors slid open. Nora and James hung back as the couple exited the lift. They stayed a few paces behind them as they walked towards the dining area.

“They’re naughty little liars, aren’t they?” Nora hissed.

“Snaky little…snakes,” James marveled. He shook his head, his eyes on Ben’s broad back and Evvie’s slightly-tanned shoulders. “I never knew Slytherinness could be sexually transmitted. Poor Benjamin…”

“‘It’s important to be well-rested, or what’s the point’,” Nora echoed. “They didn’t quiet down ‘til after five! I had to cast another spell when I woke for the toilet!”

James cleared his throat pointedly as Evvie turned around to look at them. Nora lifted her and James’s clasped hands and pretended she’d been examining James’s nails the entire time. Evvie arched an eyebrow suspiciously. Nora lifted their hands and kissed the back of James’s. James beamed innocently.

“You all right?” he asked their friend. 

“Yes…” Evvie said. She looked between them. “What are you two whispering about?”

“Sex.”

“Breastfeeding.”

Nora and James exchanged a grimace.

“Eugh, I don’t even want to _know_ how those two fit together in one conversation…see you at the table. Chase, let’s go.”

“Well, see you at the table,” Ben said cheerfully. He took Evvie’s hand and the two disappeared into the crowded dining hall.

“ _Ooh_ , _Chase_ ,” Nora teased beneath her breath.

James snorted and collapsed into laughter. He gently swatted at Nora’s bum as they walked into the dining area. She lit up the room as she laughed, her sparkling eyes scanning over the various buffets, the right sleeve of her burgundy top slipping down off her shoulder from the force of her giggling. James stepped up behind her as she grabbed a plate and leaned down, pressing a kiss to the smooth, dark skin of her shoulder. He pulled her sleeve back up, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her back against him. She leaned back against his chest and looked up.

“Guess what?”

“Hmm?” he asked.

“I love you.”

 He squeezed her closer in a warm hug. He leaned his face over hers and kissed her lips once, twice, three times…he forgot they were in a queue until somebody pointedly cleared their throat.

“Are you in line?”

The voice sounded elderly, male, and American. James knew he didn’t know this person, so for a moment, it was easy to keep on kissing his wife. But Nora pulled out of the kiss with an embarrassed laugh.

“Oh, sorry, so sorry,” she apologized. She pressed her fingers to her lips. “You can go in front of us, we’re still debating on what to get.”

“Okay, thanks,” the man said. He stepped in front of them. His wife followed after. She was smiling at James and Nora.

“Honeymoon?” she asked, in the sort of voice someone used when talking to children or cute puppies. James didn’t take offense.

“Hardly,” James smiled. “We’ve been married five years.”

“Five years!” she exclaimed. She heaped an obscene amount of eggs onto her plate. James watched in fascination as she kept on piling it on. He and Nora exchanged a stunned look. “You’re very young.”

“Mm, yeah, we had a baby at seventeen,” Nora explained. Her stomach rumbled loudly enough a moment later to be heard over the commotion of the dining area. She looked up at him as the woman sputtered through a response to Nora’s admission. “I need coffee right now or I might die. Meet you at the table?”

“Sure,” James said. He dropped his arms from her waist and kissed her cheek. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

“Thanks,” she smiled. She passed James her plate and then headed towards the coffee area. James watched her walk off and gave a happy sigh.

“It’s good of you,” he heard the older woman say. He looked down at her as he grabbed a plate.

“What is?”

“Sticking by her and making an honest woman of her.”

“Oh,” James realized. He blinked. “I actually think it was good of her to have _me._ What about you two? Have you been together long?”

“Ten years,” the woman said. “It’s my third marriage.”

“Third time’s the charm, or so she says,” her husband interjected. James laughed along with the elderly couple. And then, his favorite thing in the world happened. The woman asked: “How old is your child?”

James ended up following the elderly couple all the way back to their table as they chatted. He was so excited to be able to brag about his children that he hardly minded the heavy plates in his arms.

“Sit, sit,” the woman—Edith, as James had learned—urged. “Just for a moment. So your youngest is five months?”

James set the plates down and sank into one of the cushioned armchairs. “Yes! She loves mashed bananas and a song Nora and I made up—‘Darling Dearest Delilah’. She’s the sweetest angel; she giggles and smiles practically all day long.”

“I can tell you love your children,” Edith smiled. “I’ve got three kids in total from all my marriages, but I still don’t have any grandchildren.”

Her third husband made an annoyed sound at the back of his throat; James guessed this was a topic Edith complained about a lot.

“Oh? Why not?” James wondered.

“My daughter has no interest in marriage or children, my first son is a pilot and has no time for a pet much less a child, and my youngest daughter can’t have babies.”

“Oh,” James repeated. He wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m so sorry to hear that. About your youngest daughter. Has she looked into adoption? I work in the social services field back in London. We have loads of children looking for good homes, so I’m sure it’s the same for you.”

“She’s applied and she’s been waiting for a year or so for a match. It was a hard situation, though, because she and her husband had been trying for over a year and every test always came out completely normal. She got pregnant twice, but during the anomaly scans both times it turned out the babies were severely deformed…something wrong with their DNA, we never did get a solid answer…” Edith trailed off with a heavy sigh. James furrowed his brow.

“Really? And…where you’re from…is this a common problem? I only ask because in my world—er, meaning…London—we’re having problems with births as well. Granted, not as severe, but…”

“I _do_ think these things happen much more often year after year, but it’s no mystery to _me_ how it happens. It’s Big Pharma and Wall Street in bed together; the chemicals and carcinogens and endocrine disruptors flooding our water systems, the pesticides covering our foods, the genetic engineering, the smog clogging everybody’s lungs—it’s no surprise to me! No surprise at all!”

“Oh, here we go…” her husband said.

Edith dropped her fist down to the table. James jumped back, surprised by her feistiness.

“Everybody eats their meals out of boxes and munches down on the rare, pesticide-and-wax coated apple and then wonders why the nation’s health is declining _day_ after _day_ —”

“There you are,” Nora greeted. _Oh, thank you, Merlin and Dumbledore_. James turned and looked up at his wife. She was holding a steaming mug of coffee and smiling down at James. “You’d better come quickly; I just heard Evvie call Ben ‘ _baby’_.”

James forgot about everything else. He stood up at once. “No _way_.”

“Yes way. Complete with doe-eyes.”

“Edith, Jim—it’s been lovely to meet you, if you want to get breakfast again tomorrow we’ll be here around the same time and I wish your family well—I’ve got to go catch my friend being a hypocrite.”

 “Good luck, dear,” Edith said.

James picked up his and Nora’s plates and followed her through the massive dining area.

“I don’t understand why they lied to us,” James said, as they weaved around tables. “Why couldn’t they just say they were up all night? It’s not as if we don’t know they’re having sex; it’s their sodding _honeymoon_ and Ben alluded to it right as they left our room.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Evvie liked that too much,” Nora guessed. “She’s really private; I think she probably orchestrated the ‘we went to bed early’ lie to keep us on our toes…like ‘you think you know what we did last night, but ha, ha, you actually don’t.’”

“I think everybody on the _ship_ knew what they did last night,” James snorted.

They quieted as the table came into view. Ben and Evvie had chosen a table against the glass wall overlooking the ocean. Despite the steady crawl of the ship, the surrounding water was relatively still and went on as far as James could see. It was a canvas of sparkling azure as the rising sun bore down on the waves. As he stared at it, he got a quick, perverse urge to jump into the depths; that urge was why he avoided the top deck while drinking.

“He’s returned!! Our prodigal son!” Ben cheered.

“Where’d you go?” Evvie asked. She slid a mug of tea over to James; he took it with a grateful beam.

“Chatting with some new friends,” he told them. He took a sip of his tea and then crammed bacon into his mouth. He slyly observed his newly-married friends as he chewed. They were definitely holding hands beneath the table. Compared to James and Nora, Ben and Evvie hardly ever showed affection in public, so James was always pleased when they did. It made him happy to see his friends so happy and in love.

“New friends? Are they fun?” Ben wondered. “I wonder if they’re going to the club tonight.”

“Might do,” James said, only half listening to Ben. He’d been thinking about Edith’s words about her daughter, the one who’d lost two babies. “Evvie. You work with genes and diseases and stuff at work, right?”

“James, you know I can’t answer that.”

“Okay, but…you do. Right? I mean, you _don’t_ , ‘officially’…but you do.”

“I work in the Department of Mysteries,” she said. Her voice was bored. It was the same line she repeated every time one of the Sevens harassed her for information on her mysterious job.

“Fine. But I’ve got a question that may or may not have to do with what you do at work.”

“You can ask, but I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

James leaned forward. “Theoretically…could muggles and wizardkind fall prey to the same disease or disorder?”

“Absolutely,” Evvie responded at once. “Best example? Common cold. Witches and wizards often get the same strands as muggles do. There are a few others as well.”

James nodded. “Okay. So, theoretically, as a follow-up to that…if there were an environmental cause of some sort that was causing birth defects in muggles, could that same environmental cause impact Wizardkind, just in a slightly different and maybe less severe way?”

He was certain she’d sigh and tell him that she couldn’t answer, but instead, she straightened. Her dark eyebrows rose. She stared at him for a long, awkward moment.

“Why are you asking me that?” she finally said.

James blinked. He realized he’d stumbled upon more than he thought he had. “Oh. Er…”

“Did somebody talk to you? Where are you getting this from?”

“No! No, I was just talking to Edith, and she was ranting about…pesticides and stuff, and she was telling me about her daughter’s fertility issues, and it just got me thinking…” James trailed off. He studied Evvie’s still-stricken expression. “I’ve just discovered something, haven’t I? Is this what you’ve been working on non-stop? Is your department already looking into this? Because my department’s only just realized how serious this is getting; do you know Delilah was the last magical birth in the London area? That was _five months ago_. There have only been three more since her in the entire UK. At this rate, her Hogwarts year will be tragically small.”

Evvie looked over at Ben and then down at her lap.

“You _do_ know something about this,” James realized. He leaned forward. “Evvie.”

“You know I can’t tell you anything,” she said, her eyes still trained on her lap. “It’s highly classified.”

“But I’m James and you’re Evvie.”

“Yeah? And?”

“Head Boy and Head Girl. Best mates. Teammates! You can tell me. Nora and I are getting worried. What if whatever is causing this hurts our kids after all? Or us?”

Ben wrapped an arm around her shoulders and frowned down at her. Evvie still didn’t look up.

“I can promise you that I’m thinking about your kids all the time,” she said vaguely. “So don’t worry so much.”

“‘Don’t worry so much’…have you _met_ me?” James demanded, incredulous. He pushed his hands out towards Evvie. Her eyes rose and landed on his mutilated fingers. “That’s just from going on holiday and leaving the kids behind!”

“Well, I’ve _told you_ that you ought to take a Calming Draught every morning—”

“No,” James said quickly.

“He doesn’t like it,” Nora defended him.

“No, it makes me feel weird. Like…apathetic.”

“Calm. I think the word you’re looking for here is ‘calm’,” Evvie suggested.

“No! I feel calm and relaxed all the time. It didn’t make me feel like that. It made me a worse person…I was less emphatic. Like, Ev, listen to this: that week I tried it, I didn’t feel anxious, and that was nice, yeah, but Evra finally mastered wheel-thrown pottery, and when she came to tell me, I only felt a little bit happy and I just said ‘Good job, Evra’, and that was it.”

“Er…” Ben said. He and Evvie exchanged a confused look. “That’s…awful, James?”

“It is awful! Because she’d been working on it all summer long, nearly every day with Nora or with Dean and she _finally_ got it! And even right now, talking about it, I feel so happy for her that I wish I could swing her around and laugh with her, but on that day I only managed ‘good job’. She looked like she’d been hit.”

James felt guilt sting his heart. Thankfully, Nora took his hand beneath the table and leaned into his side. The warmth that contact caused significantly cushioned the guilt’s blows.

“You were probably trying too intense of a concentration, then,” Evvie persisted. “You should talk to Scorpius about it. I just don’t think it’s right for you to have to worry so much.”

“I do,” James said. He looked at her earnestly, desperate for her to understand what he’d understood long ago. “It’s my job.”

“Your job.”

“Yes. The way I see it: somebody needs to worry excessively about everything, or else nobody will foresee the things that can go wrong. My worrying has saved my kids _loads_ of times, it’s saved loads of kids in my job, it’s saved my friends on many occasions…it’s important, and maybe it’s difficult sometimes, but it’s worth it to me.”

“I just think you could be happier without the anxiety.”

“Happier?! Me?!” James looked down at Nora. Nora reached up and tapped his nose affectionately. “I doubt that! I’ve got the best life—there’s absolutely nothing that needs to be improved upon.” He paused. “Well, actually, I could do with my sister being a bit less…” he searched for the right word. “Wayward? Wild. Rebellious?”

“Hedonistic?” Evvie suggested. “God, Ben and I walked in on her and Little Cade at the reception, and let’s just say Little Cade is not so little anymore.”

“Eugh,” Ben and James chorused, each for different reasons. Ben stared unseeingly at the table, clearly replaying a somewhat traumatizing memory.

“Come on, I don’t want to hear that,” James complained, his mouth twisted in disgust.

“Cut her a bit of slack,” Evvie told James. “It’s been a hard year for her, right?”

James furrowed his brow. He studied Evvie’s brown eyes. “Has it?”

Her expression gradually fell. “Oh. Well…I mean…possibly?”

James’s jaw dropped. “She’s told _you_ about something horrible that’s happened this year but she hasn’t told _me_?! You’re joking! I’m her brother! We share blood!”

“No! _She_ hasn’t told me anything,” Evvie promised.

“Then who…?!”

Evvie stood abruptly. “Would anybody like more coffee?”

“That’d be lovely, Ev, thank—” Nora spotted James’s look. “I mean…no…not just yet…?”

“Don’t avoid my question! I’ll go _with_ you to get the coffees,” James said. He grabbed his wife’s coffee cup so he could refill it. “Ben? Coffee?”

“No, it’s quite unnecessary for you to go with me, I’ve got two hands, I can carry it on my own—”

“No, I think this should definitely be a group endeavor,” James insisted. Evvie grimaced.

“Fine. Ben? Coffee?”

“Yeah, go on! I’ll regret it later but what the hell!”

“My adventurous husband,” Evvie said dryly. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his lips a moment afterwards though, clearly much more amused and endeared by him than she let on. 

Ben winked as she pulled back. “My beautiful wife.”

Their gaze was becoming obscenely heavy. James caught Nora trying to hide her laughter into her glass of water. He wouldn’t let himself be distracted.

“Coffee?” he reminded her loudly.

Evvie reluctantly tore her eyes from Ben’s. “Right. Let’s go.”

Evvie attempted to outwalk James to avoid conversation, but James’s legs were much longer, so it wasn’t difficult to match her pace.

“Caden told you something about Lily?” he guessed.

Evvie looked up at the ceiling and pursed her lips—her universal ‘not telling’ expression. James was getting rather sick of seeing it.

“Seriously?! I get that look when it’s about work things…even though you and Ben _did_ live with us for nearly half a decade and you _did_ help raise my kids and you _are_ one of my best friends, but whatever…but I can’t believe you’re honestly going to keep something about my own _sister_ from me!”

“The reason I know things that you don’t is because I can keep secrets that you can’t,” she said (a bit haughtily, in James’s opinion).

“Oi! I keep _loads_ of secrets!” James countered, as Evvie stepped up to the coffee machine. She grabbed a mug for Ben and pulled the lever down to fill it.

“You’re the most open person I know. It’s not a bad thing. It just is _a thing._ People wouldn’t tell me things if they assumed I’d tell other people,” she said. She stepped to the side so James could refill Nora’s mug.

“That’s a lovely observation, but it still doesn’t tell me what happened to my little sister.”

Evvie set the sugar down forcefully. She turned to face James. Her gaze was challenging.

“You want to know what happened to Lily?”

“Yeah! Yes, I very clearly do!”

“Then _ask her_.”

With that, Evvie snatched Ben’s mug up and stalked back towards their table. James huffed as he sprinkled cinnamon into Nora’s coffee, squirted the precise amount of honey in, and then poured in cream until it was the right shade. He stamped towards the table with the intention of explaining to Evvie that one didn’t simply _ask_ Lily Potter anything, but he spotted a table with little pastries on his way, so he changed course and stopped by to grab some for himself and Nora. He finally returned with three pastries in his mouth, two in each pocket, and ten on a plate. He set the plate down in front of Nora. She took her coffee.

“Mmm, thank you, Jamie baby,” she said.

James looked at the empty seats across from her. “Where are Ben and Evvie?”

“They went ahead to the solarium. Raspberry?” She pointed at the pastries.

“This half is,” he affirmed. “I can’t believe she won’t tell me about Lily.”

“I can believe it,” she said. She took a bite out of one of the pastries. “I wouldn’t worry so much; Lily was alive, she seemed healthy enough, and she was getting off with Caden in front of everybody, so whatever it is can’t be that bad.” James sighed. He crammed an entire pastry into his mouth and sulked as he chewed. Nora wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t dwell on it. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“What if it’s not? What if…she’s got some sort of…evil Dark wizard drug dealer after her and they come searching for her while she’s with our kids?!”

“Lily’s not on drugs.”

“Lily could so be on drugs.”

“She’s not on drugs.”

“Oh, Merlin! Lily’s on _drugs_ ,” James decided, horrified. His heart began pounding. He crammed another pastry into his mouth anxiously. As soon as he’d swallowed the majority of it, he continued on. “She’s going to get our kids killed in a grisly drug war!”

“She’s really not,” Nora said gently. She pushed her coffee into his line of sight. “Drink this.”

He took it and gulped down two scalding sips. The hot temperature distracted him from his previous train of thought.

“Want to go shopping now?” Nora asked him.

His thoughts flew to the toys he’d picked out for his kids on their brief walk-through of the cruise shops.

“Yeah, all right,” he agreed. He hoped the stuffed shark he’d picked for Henry was still there. He crammed one last pastry into his mouth and rose from the table. Nora took his hand and leaned into his side as they walked. It didn’t take him long to remember why his heart was racing.

“There’s a new drug gaining traction, you know. It’s sort of like muggle cocaine. I’ve had to put three sets of parents into rehabilitation and counseling for it just this month.”

“James,” Nora said. She reached up and cradled his face as they stepped onto the lift. She studied his eyes. “You’re obsessing.”

“I’m not,” he scoffed. “I’m not obsessing.”

“You are, baby. She’s not on drugs and our kids aren’t going to be killed by her hypothetical drug lord.”

“But listen: something shady is going on with Lily, Evvie won’t tell us, there’s a new drug…oh! And what was that bit Evvie said about ‘always thinking about our kids’, eh? Of course she’d be thinking about them if she knew Lily had a massive, evil, drug-pedaling, Voldemort-esque wizard after her! And I bet Caden ended things with Lily _over_ the drugs! Nora, it all makes sense.”

James’s ranting was drawn to a premature halt as a group of people got onto the lift. He shifted closer to his wife and lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I had a bad feeling about this holiday, you know, we should’ve stayed home, we need to get the mirror and contact Dean and Seamus and—”

Nora silenced him with a gentle kiss. He felt her soft curves press against his front, applying just enough pressure that he automatically backed up and leaned against the glass wall of the lift. She drew her hands through his hair and snogged him so thoroughly that he forgot he was even on a lift. He was blushing and out of breath when she pulled back.

“Shall we go back to the room or do you feel better?”

“I feel better and we should go back to the room.”

She gave a bright laugh. James very much wanted to hoist her up into his arms and press her into the lift wall.

“Should we get the kids’ toys first?” she asked.

“Oh,” he remembered. He took a deep breath, hoping to reroute oxygen and blood to his brain. “Yeah, we should do that first. I really want that shark for Henry. He’ll adore it.”

“And the necklace for Evra,” Nora agreed. “It’s the most ‘Evra’ thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

James thought about the radiant smile his eldest would give upon receiving the necklace. His heart swelled at the mental image of her adorable grin.

“Yes, we can’t forget that,” he agreed.

* * *

 

He and Nora spent two hours walking up and down the crowded promenade, popping into nearly every shop to search for the perfect gifts for their kids. They purchased a massive, cuddly shark for Henry, a necklace (a thin bronze chain with an amber bead hanging from it and a tiny bronze honeybee charm hanging in front of that) for Evra, an interactive Caribbean map for Finnigan, and a set of fist-sized plush fish for Delilah to gnaw on or chuck at people’s heads. James was so excited to give his kids their new gifts that he could hardly wait to be home. Nora was just as excited.

“Delilah’s going to _love_ these fish,” Nora said.

“She is!” James beamed. “She’s going to giggle and cuddle them and probably try to cram them into her mouth all at once!”

“I wonder what they’re doing right now. Do you think they miss us?”

“Definitely,” James nodded.

“I miss them.”

“Me too,” he agreed. He frowned. “Does it feel weird to you—being without them? I have to fight this constant feeling that I’ve left half myself behind.”

“ _Yes_ , every moment,” Nora agreed. “Even just now, in the shops, I’d have moments where I’d look behind us for the kids and my heart would stop because they weren’t there.”

“I’ve done that a couple times, too,” James said.

They lapsed into a slightly melancholic silence. James looked over at his wife.

“Still—the uninterrupted sex is nice.”

Her face lit up as she laughed. “Yeah, that part of the trip is definitely appreciated.”

“And we can actually refer to ourselves as ‘James’ and ‘Nora’ instead of ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’,” James continued.

“I’m still answering to ‘Mummy’, though. I said ‘what?’ back to this little girl in the toilets yesterday who was addressing her own mother.”

“Yeah, I actually had a similar experience yesterday, but…let’s just say the person was not talking to their actual daddy.”

“Oh,” Nora winced. Her lips twitched a moment later. She pressed her fingers over them. “You…er…didn’t tell me about that.”

James fell into laughter; she quickly allowed herself to do the same.

“Yeah, let’s just say the couple was very confused when I turned around and said ‘yes?’.”

“Not the daddy they were talking about, then.”

“No…I’m about half the daddy they were talking about,” James laughed. “He was buff.”

“Aw,” Nora said. She leaned up and kissed his nose. “Well you’re a _real_ daddy and the best one at that.”

“Yeah,” James beamed. He stood straighter as pride swelled within his chest. “I am. And you’re a phenomenal mum.”

“Aw,” she repeated. Her thumb stroked over his cheek. James looped his arms around her hips and pulled her against him. He rested his forehead against hers and met her smiling lips with his.

“Let’s go back to the stateroom,” Nora suggested. She ran her hands down his back. “We can catch up with Ben and Evvie later.”

He didn’t need to be convinced. He had her hand in his and was headed towards the lifts in only a few seconds’ time.

* * *

 

He wished there was a word bigger than ‘love’, because that’s the word he really needed to express the emotion that crowded his chest. He held his wife’s gaze, their heads resting on the same pillow, their faces turned down towards each other, his heart hammering away in his chest. He contently stroked the bare skin of her waist. He felt a bit choked up. _I love you_ wasn’t enough.

“You’re my best friend,” he told her.

 _I love you and more_.

She reached up and caressed her thumb over his swollen lips. He wanted to lean in and kiss her skin, but he didn’t want to look away from her.

“You’ve always been my best friend,” she said. And he smiled, because he knew she loved him and more, too.

Part of him was still conditioned to listen for the sound of little feet. He didn’t allow himself to fully relax until Nora had snuggled up to him and shut her eyes; he reminded himself that there was nobody they had to look after but themselves and allowed himself to do the same. He knew she wasn’t really sleeping—just daydreaming, she did that a lot—but it was so peaceful to lie there with her in his arms that he found himself slipping off easily. He slowly worked his fingers through her loose hair, enjoying the brief catches before he gently pulled through each section of curls, comforted by the familiar, sweet, lingering scent of the vanilla body cream she applied after showers. He kept one hand playing gently with her hair while the other moved to stroke the smooth skin of her back. She gave a contented sigh into his chest. He thought about telling her how much he loved every single part of her, but he figured she probably already knew that. He’d given her his life, his name, his children, his entire heart—anything else he could find to offer up, he would’ve in a heartbeat.

He took a short nap, and when he woke, he was alone.

“ _Noraaaa_ …” he whined. He opened his eyes only to immediately shut them again. The stateroom light was on and the brightness accosted his eyes. He reached out across the bed blindly, in search of his wife, but he only managed to find her pillow. He brought it over and hugged it to him. It still smelled like their home. He was tired, and he wanted to go back to sleep, but where was Nora? Probably just getting dressed or showering or pumping or drawing or—

What if she was in trouble?

_No, probably just…_

Wait—what if she _was_ in trouble? Where _was_ she?

His anxiety quickly beat his contentment into submission. He sat straight up. He squinted around the stateroom, his eyes burning from the brightness.  

“Nora?” he demanded, his voice a bit sharper in his worry. He flung the blanket off him and rose from the bed. He stumbled over to the small en suite bathroom. He knocked once on the door. “Nora? You in here?”

Silence. He dug his nail into the skin beside his thumbnail on the opposite hand. He dragged that nail down and then back up again. He peeked inside the bathroom, but she wasn’t there. Maybe she was in Ben and Evvie’s room? He walked to the stateroom door and pulled it open, so intent on locating his wife that it didn’t occur to him that he was still naked. He spotted three familiar people coming towards him from the neighboring stateroom.

“Nora,” he said, relieved. She was already dressed. Her hair was pulled up into its typical bun and her sunglasses were resting atop her head.

“Oh, _God_ ,” Evvie said. She reached up and slapped her hand over her eyes. “Put that away!”

“Hey, James,” Ben greeted, grinning. He pointed down. “You’re naked, you know.”

James felt his heart jump. He looked down. _Right._ He dropped his hands to shield himself and felt his face burn brightly.

“Bollocks,” he squeaked.

“Yep, bollocks indeed,” Ben agreed.

“Sorry,” James said. He quickly backed up into his room. He heard Nora telling Ben and Evvie that they’d meet them at the solarium, and then she entered the room as well. James dropped his hands as soon as the door was shut.

“You were gone,” he said.

“Ben and Evvie came knocking while you were asleep. I lied and told them you had a headache and needed a rest.”

That distracted James for a moment. “Huh? Why?”

“Because Evvie lied to me. And it bothers me. I’ll lie right back ‘til she comes clean."

“Oh. Okay,” James said. “I didn’t know where you were.”

She tossed something towards him. James barely managed to catch the glass tube.

“Evvie gave me a pain potion for your headache.”

“Ohh,” James winced. “That’s a bit brutal, isn’t it? I sort of feel bad for lying now?”

“ _You_ didn’t lie, I did.”

“Well…we sort of both lied. Because we’re a package deal.”

“Don’t feel bad. I think she definitely knew that I was lying. And I think she knew that I knew that she knew that I was lying. And I think she knew that I knew that she knew that I knew she was lying this morning.”

James furrowed his brow. His head really _was_ beginning to ache.

“So…she knows that we know that she and Ben were shagging all night…and she knows that you and I were making love and that you were just lying to get back at her for lying to you…and you’re both aware that you were both lying…but now you’re continuing to lie to each other, even though you both know it’s a lie, because…” he trailed off, uncertain.

“Because it bothers me that she lied to me. It hurts my feelings.”

“Right,” James said. He decided to just let that be. They would sort it out. He walked over and lifted the collar of her thin dress, peeking beneath. Sure enough, he spotted her swimsuit. “We’re going swimming?”

“If you like.”

James thought about it for a moment. He didn’t really want to risk getting sunburnt again, but he _did_ like the idea of lounging about with a drink.

“Yes, sounds fun. But I’m going to apply the sun cream  _before_ I leave the room.”

“I’ve already got it out for you, don’t worry.”

* * *

 

He supposed they _might_ be gossipers. It didn’t occur to him until after his and Nora’s third whispered conversation about the ambiguous pair lounging beside their chairs, on the other side from Ben and Evvie.

“Brother and sister,” Nora decided, artfully examining the pair through the corner of her eye as she took a sip of her mimosa.

James reached over as if he were adjusting the strap of Nora’s swimsuit top. In reality, he was peeking over at the pair. He grimaced as the middle-aged woman kissed the man’s forehead.

“No, I don’t think so,” he hissed back. He caressed the elegant line of her neck before he pulled his hand back into his own lap. “She’s just kissed the man’s forehead.”

“Not his lips, though?”

“No, but they’re both practically naked.”

“Oh, right, true.”

James feigned a cough and pretended to peek up at the sun glaring down through the glass encasing the solarium. He peeked down at the pair as he did. Now they were on their respective sides of the double lounger, each reading a book.

“Maybe they’re like Louis and Clem,” Nora suggested. “Together—but not together. In-love friends, but in an allegedly non-sexual way.”

“I could see that,” James agreed. “Well, in any case, they seem happy. Though I don’t know how anybody on this ship could be _unhappy_. The muggles are really something, aren’t they? I mean, some might argue they’ve got more time on their hands than they need, but they’ve put an entire city onto a _boat_. All the things to do—” James sat straight up.

“What?” Nora asked.

“We’ve forgotten about our ice show!! What time is it?”

Nora lifted her wrist. She pulled her sunglasses up and squinted at the wristwatch James’s mum had given her on her and James’s first Christmas as a married couple.

“We’ve missed it,” Nora said, frowning. She set her drink down and scooted closer. She pushed a leg between James’s and rubbed his back. “I’m sorry, Jamie baby.”

He sighed. He kissed her forehead. “Me too. I know you really wanted to see the ice show.”

“And you really wanted to ice skate. Guess we overdid our scheduling with the midday sex.”

James considered that. When put that way—midday sex or an ice show—he felt much better about the decision they’d made.

“If we could only do one, I’m happy with the choice we made.”

He felt her press a soft kiss to the sun-heated skin of his neck. “Me as well.”

“Things look a bit intense over here, everything all right? What’s the big discussion about?” Ben called. James looked over his shoulder at his friend. Ben was leaning over Evvie and peering at them curiously.

“Ziplining,” Nora lied, apparently still feeling injured enough to continue the lie-fight.

“We should! We should _absolutely_ zipline! Evvie and I went twice this morning, it’s brilliant!” Ben gushed.

“Is it?” James asked in interest. He turned over onto his other side to face Ben. “I thought we decided flying through the air without magic was a bit mad.”

“It _is_ and it _was—_ and we enjoyed every second of it! We should go get in the queue now!”

“Yeah, all right! Nora, want to go ziplining?” James asked excitedly.

She’d turned back over onto her back and was sipping from her mimosa. Judging by her relaxed posture, she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Not just yet. Come back for me in an hour or so?”

“Okay,” James agreed. He leaned over and kissed her in parting. “Evvie, are you coming?”

“No, I’ll stay here with Nora,” Evvie said. Ben leaned over her and pressed her back into the lounge chair; his goodbye kiss was a bit dodgier, with a hand practically under her swimsuit top, and another out of sight (James didn’t even want to know). The couple was flushed when he pulled back.

“Sure you want to stay?” Ben challenged, his eyes locked on hers, an intensity flowing between them that was decidedly awkward for James to witness. He cleared his throat and turned his eyes up to the sun. Thankfully, he couldn’t make out the specifics of what Evvie whispered back, but judging by the flustered way Ben appeared as they departed the solarium, it’d been something good.

After walking beside a dazed, blushing Ben for a good five minutes, James took mercy on him.

“Does she get off on tormenting you?” He felt his cheeks flush as his thoughts automatically flew to the things he’d accidentally overheard the night before. He quickly tried to correct his words. “With—I mean—you know, whispering stuff right as you’re about to go your separate ways. I didn’t mean—like tying up or—I mean—not that you would—I don’t know where that came from, ha. Er. What I’m asking is: does she get off on…driving you mad?”

Ben didn’t reply for a long moment. He was still staring unseeingly forward, his cheeks a deep red.

“God, I hope so,” Ben finally said. It didn’t pass by James’s notice that Ben was picking up on all the muggle phrases littered through Evvie’s speech. Ben stopped walking. “Could you slap me?”

James stared. “…Sorry?”

“You. Can you slap me? I need a distraction. Right now.”

James understood the implications quickly. “Oh! Oh. Right. Okay. Sure, I’ll slap you, mate. Come here.”

Ben stepped forward and turned his face to the side, offering his left cheek. James gave his face a firm pat—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to sting. Ben shook his face a moment later.

“Brilliant. Thanks. I love you, man.”

“I love you, too,” James said, touched. He slung an arm around Ben’s shoulders. “C’mon, you’ll survive this. What nobody tells you is that the honeymoon can be a bit painful.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed, surprised. “Exactly. I’ve got some chaffing that’s—”

“No, er, I really meant more emotionally…but if you want to talk about your…chaffing…?”

“No, that’s okay,” Ben quickly said. “I get what you mean. Feels a bit painful to not be with her. And that’s both love _and_ lust speaking, mind you, so it’s double-torture.”

“Double-torture,” James repeated. He nodded. “I like that.”

He was trying to decide whether to bring up what he and Nora overheard last night as they continued their walk to the other side of the massive ship. He didn’t want to make things awkward for Ben, and really, it was none of his business, but he would’ve liked to have better understood why they lied so he could reassure Nora that it wasn’t because Evvie didn’t trust her.

“Speaking of torturous love,” he began, without thinking. He winced a second later. Not a good start. “Er…so…you and Evvie sort of…lied to us this morning. Why?”

Ben—ever faithful, sometimes to a fault—was hardly ruffled.

“What? No we didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did. Nora and I heard you two…well. I think you forgot your silencing spell.”

“Nope. We were _definitely_ in bed asleep right after helping you.”

Ben played with his shiny new wedding band.

“Okay. I’m sensing that this is what you’re supposed to say and that I’m not going to get you to say anything else, but I just want you to know that it’s hurt Nora’s feelings. She doesn’t like when people lie to her.”

“I will…pass that along,” Ben said. “But I’m sure they’re talking about that right now.”

“Hopefully. Probably.” A silence lapsed over them. James was struggling not to laugh. “It’s a bit wild, though, isn’t it?”

He was hoping referencing things vaguely would earn him some insight. He wasn’t wrong. Ben seemed to be considering it for a moment, and then his face opened with a cheeky grin.

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “It’s always been.”

“I think we all had a vague idea,” James laughed.

“And your idea is still very far from the mark, I assure you.” Ben seemed to be debating on whether or not to share something. James could tell he both wanted—and didn’t want—to talk about it. “I like not talking about it. Because it feels more exciting. Things are more exciting when they’re secrets. Evvie taught me that. It’s brilliant, it’s like we’re in our own little world, it’s the most intense emotion…” he trailed off.

“Oh, well, by all means, keep it a secret,” James said quickly. “Wouldn’t want to spoil your intense fun.” He meant it genuinely.

“Well…there is one thing I’ve wanted to tell you for a while…you know how Ev’s a really good girl? We all tried to catch her swearing and rarely succeeded?”

“Yes…” James recalled, sensing where this was going (having heard a great example of it the night before).

“So, let’s just say she can swear like the best of them, she just…saves it.”

Ben’s face was flushing again. He almost looked sunburnt. James felt affection flood his chest. He brought Ben closer to his side and pressed a hard kiss to the top of his head.  

“Merlin, I love you two,” he admitted. He spotted the zipline running above their heads. “Keep your exciting, passionate secrets. Let’s go tempt muggle fate together.”

* * *

 

They were windswept and nearly hooting with laughter as they headed back towards the solarium. James was convinced the muggles had sorted life out better without magic than wizards had managed _with_ it.

“Magic lights—but without magic. Magic moving picture films—but without magic. I might become a muggle,” James said.

“Nah, it’s not always this fun. When you get ill a lot of the time you have to have your body actually sliced open. And then Healers reach in and mess with your insides. _And_ cleaning takes _ages_. And if you lose something, you’ve got to actually look for it. No summoning. And worst of all—no Quidditch! But the Internet. That is something special.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Nora’s muggle aunts and uncles have the internet on pocket computers. You can find anything inside of them.”

“There’s _loads_ of stuff you can find on the internet…” Ben said. The weird tilt to his tone told James to leave that one alone.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re behind on some things,” James admitted. “That’s why so many people are enchanting muggle appliances and putting them inside their houses now. And even though our healers can do so many amazing things, I think there are definitely areas that we’re behind in. Like all this stuff with the increase in squib births. The muggles could use their super computers and their laboratories and come up with an answer.”

Ben was silent for longer than he ought to have been. “They can do loads in the Department of Mysteries too, though.”

James glanced quickly at Ben. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Nice try.”

“Damn.”

“Speaking off…when we get back…Evvie’s got to run something by you and Nora,” Ben said quickly. The way he rushed the words out told James he’d been attempting to work up to this the entire time they’d been alone together. He furrowed his brow.

“What do you mean?”

“Just…something she’s got to ask you. But it’s got to be a secret, all right? She could get in _loads_ of trouble if anybody finds out. And she’s only offering because she loves you guys and she loves your kids. And you need to listen and let her speak—don’t interrupt her.”

James froze. Ben kept on walking before he realized James had stopped. James felt his chest tighten.

“Oh, no,” he said, his eyes wide. “There _is_ a Voldemort drug lord after Lily.”

Ben stared. “ _What_?”

“The…and…” Ben looked entirely flummoxed. James hesitated. “Er…never mind.”

James was anxious and silent the entire walk back. With every step he took, he catastrophized more, until he was convinced upon arriving back at the solarium that his family’s life was in grave danger. He hardly noticed that Evvie and Nora were on the same lounge chair and seemed to have worked past whatever had been going on before. He sat down at Evvie’s feet and stared.

“What, Evvie?” he demanded.

Evvie sighed. “Ben, I said to _gently lead into it_!”

“I did!” Ben defended.

“Then why does he look like you’ve just told him he needs a heart transplant?”

“…Because he’s James? Sorry, mate.”

“No, that’s fair,” James agreed. “Evvie, what do you want to ask Nora and me?”

Nora peered curiously at her. Evvie sat up slowly.

“First off, you can’t tell _anybody_. You can’t even tell anybody that I asked if you decline. You can’t even suggest that it’s something that I _might’ve_ asked. This is very serious.”

Nora sat up, too. She and James exchanged a worried look, their lips pressed into tight lines.

“What? You’re frightening me,” Nora admitted.

Evvie shifted closer as if somebody nearby might hear, even though they were certainly the only wizards and witches on the entire boat. She lowered her voice.

“The situation with the decreasing magical births? It’s a much bigger problem than anybody knows right now.”

James wasn’t too surprised to hear that, but it worried him nonetheless.

“As in…extinction-level problem?” Nora whispered.

It appeared to be genuinely painful for Evvie to continue. James wondered—not for the first time—whether those in the Department of Mysteries had to sign some sort of contract that subjected them to genuine pain if they broke it. Judging by Evvie’s gritted teeth and Ben’s comforting hand rubbing circles into her back, he wasn’t far off.

“Could be very soon, if we don’t figure out what’s going on and fix it. We’ve got to start from the ground up because it could be an alarming number of things…the problem is, there’s this ridiculous process you have to go through to run a study using members of our society. A literal year’s worth of paperwork and litigation to make sure that no sensitive information leaks from the Department and to thoroughly vet the subject— _oh, Christ_ —” she bowed forward and cradled her head in her hands.

“Less wordy, maybe?” Ben asked. He looked a bit ill himself, like seeing his new wife in pain made him hurt, too.

“Evvie,” Nora said, momentarily distracted from whatever Evvie was about to tell them. “Does it _literally_ hurt to tell people about what you do in the department?”

Evvie looked to Ben to explain. She pressed her face into her lap a second later, her hands still squeezing her head.  

"When Voldemort came to power a second time, there were loads of leaks within the DoM, so this was the…solution to overcoming that risk, to make sure it never happened again. It’s nothing life-threatening or genuinely damaging—Evvie says it feels like incredibly bad brain freeze—but it’s painful enough to make the person seriously reconsider giving information. It’s been amended a few times over the years…it’s automatically lifted the moment you say you quit, but you have to agree to have those particular work-related memories removed if it is…a few years ago they changed it where you can tell your spouse information without pain, but in turn…” Ben trailed off. At first, James thought he was just thinking about what to say next, but he realized he was trying to choke words out. He seemed literally tongue-tied. “So she can tell me, but I can’t tell anybody else. Literally, _can’t_. They considered switching the pain for this method for the DoM employees too, but everybody in the department thinks it’s important for the workers to be _able_ to tell the information if they deem it important enough to withstand the pain, in case there’s ever serious corruption in place. I think they should get rid of it in general, but apparently all the employees within the DoM keep voting to keep it in place.”

“It’s necessary,” Evvie said through gritted teeth, her head still in her hands. “It’s very difficult to keep the things we know quiet. Are you both listening carefully?”

“Yes,” James and Nora said quickly.

“We finally went through the process and got three subjects—the parents of a squib child recently born and the child themselves. We’re in the process now of finding another set of subjects to compare the first to, to try and find the difference, but even with it fast-tracked it’ll take at least five months to—” she gave a strained whimper. It made James’s heart turn.

“You don’t have to tell us,” he said.

“Can you write it down, or does it hurt just as badly that way?” Nora asked.

“Give me a moment,” she requested, her words tight through her clenched teeth.

“Less wordy, Ev,” Ben repeated nervously. “Get to the point.”

“I’m _trying_ to adequately explain the situation, _Chase_.”

“They’re clever; they can fill in the blanks.”

The pain seemed to bolster Ben’s position because her words sped up. “I don’t need months to vet you and Nora. And you two are some of the only parents who are still producing magical children. We’ve got to know why.”

James looked at Nora. Nora looked at him. Both their lips had parted in surprise.

“Oh,” Nora said. “So you want us to be subjects?”

Ben was avoiding their eyes. James thought he probably understood why he was acting so strange. “And one of our kids. You want to experiment on one of our kids.”

Nora slowly leaned back from Evvie. She frowned deeply.

“What?”

“Nothing painful. Nothing dangerous. We just need a few blood samples.”

“ _Blood_?!” James said. “As in—taking blood from our child?”

“And—some samples…from both of you, too.”

The words were getting harder and harder to get out as the pain became presumably blinding. James wasn’t sure how he felt. And because this had everything to do with reproduction, he was a bit wary about what kind of samples they needed.

“So…you need…” he pursed his lips.

“Speed it up, mate,” Ben begged, with a pointed look at his suffering wife.

“A…sample?” he asked, his cheeks flushed.

“Yes. From both of you.”

“Both of us?!” James squeaked. “I don’t see how that’s going to work. I mean, I suppose I can pop back into the stateroom and…Nora, would you help me?”

She wasn’t following. “With what? What are you talking about?”

“But I don’t see how I’m meant to get eggs from Nora; they’re buried in her ovaries, there’s no way that’s happening without spells I’ve got _no_ experience doing—”

“ _No_! I don’t want your _sperm_ , James!” Evvie exclaimed, definitely louder than she’d intended. A passing couple stopped and stared oddly at their group of four. They were whispering judgmentally as they sped off.

“Oh…” he realized, his cheeks reddening further. “Just blood.”

“Yes!”

“Oh. Yeah, sure, you can have some of my blood.”

“Nobody can know,” Evvie stressed. “I’m going to have to do the tests in secret and, if I make a breakthrough, it’ll probably be at the cost of my career.”

“I think they’ll let you off the hook if you save the entire wizarding race,” Ben whispered.

“Nora?” Evvie pressed.

Nora looked up at James. He could sense her uncertainty.

“You can definitely have my blood, but I don’t know about one of the kids’. I feel like it’s not my decision to make. It’s not my blood; it’s theirs,” she said.

James had to agree with Nora, even if he wished he could’ve given Evvie a quicker and tidier answer.

“It’d have to be Evra, because she’s the only one old enough to even have a shot at keeping a secret. We can talk to her about it. But if she doesn’t want to…” James looked at Nora. She nodded, clearly on the same wavelength. “I don’t feel comfortable making her.”

“I respect that and I can still compare both of you with the other set of parents. Okay, topic’s over,” she managed, and with that, she fell against Ben, clearly worn out from the pain and mental strain. A concerned silence settled over the group. Nora patted Evvie’s arm gently.

“I wish you’d be a potioneer,” Ben finally said. “I mean, nobody would ever listen if you talked about potion ingredients, because Potions is boring, but at least it wouldn’t hurt.”

Everybody reluctantly laughed.

* * *

 

Evvie and Ben disappeared until after dinner. Once they were reunited, the four headed to the casino.

“I think I’ve really got the hang of it now,” James told them. “Blackjack.”

Ben elbowed him. “I doubt that.”

“Yeah?! I can win more playing Blackjack than you can playing anything else, even your silly slot machines!”

“Ha! Yeah right!” Ben said.

“He _is_ good at it,” Nora defended James. James tightened the arm around her waist.

“Yeah! I am! See!”

“Tell you what,” Evvie said slyly. “How about this: the person who earns the most in the first hour gets to name James and Nora’s next child.”

“What?!” Nora said, alarmed.

“ _YES_!” Ben shouted.

“Whoa, wait, we’re not auctioning off our baby’s name!” Nora said. “Not without some serious rules!”

“Yeah!” James agreed. “We’ve already picked the next name anyway!”

“Oh,” Evvie said. Her face fell, but it looked a bit rehearsed. “I didn’t realize you were scared.”

“We’re not _scared_ ,” Nora scoffed.

“Not confident in James’s abilities?”

“I’m very confident in James’s abilities!”

“It just sort of seemed like you were scared. What do you think, Ben? Did it seem like they were scared?”

“It definitely did, Ev.”

“Who do you two have a bet with? Who bet you couldn’t get the naming rights?” James demanded. “Was it Roxanne? Because Evra’s middle name is Roxanne, she’s got no room to complain!”

 “Maybe there’s no bet. Maybe I just want to tease Ben and name the next baby 'Chase',” Evvie suggested.

“Yeah, well, I was going to go with _Hazel_ ,” Ben countered.

“There’s definitely a bet,” Nora said, her eyes narrowed. “But it doesn’t really matter, because James can win any day. Fine. Whoever wins the most in the first hour can name our next child. BUT—it has to be after somebody we care about. That’s the pattern.”

“Uh,” James said. “Nora…”

“Great,” Evvie said. She slung her leather jacket over her arm and squared her shoulders. “Time starts now. Absolutely not magic.”

And with that, she headed into the casino, Ben hurrying after her quickly.

“Shit,” James said.

“What?” Nora asked.

James looked over at her. His mouth twisted. “I’m really not that confident in my abilities.”

“Oh…shit.”

* * *

 

He lost an upsetting amount of money in the first twenty minutes. He decided to cut his losses and hope his wife was faring better. He found her over by a strange machine that ran on muggle coins, methodically examining the contents. Every time somebody put a coin in, it would fall down to a topmost ledge full of hundreds of the same type of coin. If it was put in the right spot, it would push an avalanche of coins off the ledge and down into the pit, for the player to collect. His wife was kneeling in front of the machine, her eyes narrowed with a very specific type of concentration he only ever saw when she was working on a vault design. James noticed she had attracted quite the audience. He watched the people on the adjacent machines looking at her enviously as she put another coin in and was promptly rewarded by a shower of silver. The others seemed to be losing a lot of money.

“How are you doing that?” James whispered, his hand falling to rest on her back.

“It’s quite like designing a vault,” she said. “Cause and effect.” She looked up at him briefly. “How much have you won so far?”

“Er…negative amounts. I think you’re our future baby’s best hope.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked back at the machine. “I think I can do it, but you’ll need to sabotage.”

“Sabotage?”

“Ben’s been successful at the slot machines. Evvie’s been less so at roulette. Go for Ben.”

James thought that through, his hand massaging his wife’s back as he thought. “Yeah…yeah…Ben…hit him where he’s weakest…his bollocks.”

“Whatever you’ve got to do to keep our baby from being named after a type of wood.”

“I won’t let you down,” he said. “I’ve got a plan.”

Ordinarily, teaming up with a Slytherin when they were also competing against you wasn’t the best idea. But James had a feeling that this is was more about Evvie and Ben than Evvie genuinely wanting to name the next Potter baby, so he assumed she’d much rather Nora win than Ben in the end. He found her at a nearby roulette table, half bent over the edge, her eyes locked on the wheel. Another player was very rudely and obviously staring at her bum. James took offense to his predatory gaze, and in the spirit of friendship, he ‘accidentally’ directed his wand at the man’s whisky. He made it vibrate suddenly, just enough to alarm the man. His grip loosened and it tipped forward, spilling down the front of his trousers.

“Oh, mate,” James said, his voice heavy with feigned sympathy. “You’ve made a mess of yourself, look at that! There are serviettes right over there at the bar.”

The man was confused and a bit dazed. “Wha—? Oh, yeah…thanks…”

He stalked off, leaving Evvie free from prying eyes. James took the man’s spot.

“How’s it going?” James asked. She didn’t look up at him.

“Shouldn’t you be astounding everybody with your Blackjack skills?”

“No. Tonight I’m a supportive husband and Nora’s the breadwinner. Ben’s doing well, isn’t he?”

“Mmhmm,” she said shortly.

“I think he might beat you.”

“Sorry, could you bugger off? It’s just—I’m trying to focus here.”

“Fine,” James sniffed. “I was going to see if you wanted to form a momentary alliance, to get Ben out of the way, but I see now that you’re not threatened by how much he’s earning.”

She looked up at him. She examined his expression for deceit and then turned to look in the direction Ben had gone. They could clearly hear him hooting in glee as he made another win. She pursed her lips.

“What would this alliance entail?”

“Nothing that wouldn’t be loads of fun for you.”

She crossed her arms over her black dress. “Keep talking.”

“I’ve got this gut feeling that he gets a bit…flustered when you do certain things. Like…oh, I dunno…swear.”

Evvie smacked his arm at once.

“ _Ow_!” James complained. Evvie reached up and grabbed his tie. He was pulled down so he was at her level. Her eyes bore into his.

“Listen here,” she said, her voice low. “We forgot the silencing spell. If you _ever_ —I mean _ever_ —tell any of our friends what you heard—” she stopped suddenly. James was left hanging in fear.

“What? You’ll what?” he finally pleaded.

“You won’t even know until I do it,” she hissed, and with that, she let go of his tie. He straightened up.

“Merlin’s pants, Evvie, why’s everything got to be so—” her severe look silenced him. “Okay, well, _keeping what I learned a secret_ , I think we can use it to our advantage. I have reason to believe that if we walk over there, and you _casually_ let a few profanities slip into the conversation, that he might very well lose himself all over the slot machine.”

“Gross. And no, he wouldn’t. But you’re onto something here…”

“Yeah?!” James said excitedly. “So you’re in?!”

Ben chose the wrong moment to give another loud (and slightly obnoxious) cry of victory. Evvie was beginning to look anxious now.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” she said.

“Great! Let’s go!” James said. He set off towards Ben, but he sensed Evvie hadn’t moved. When he looked back, she was pulling her leather jacket on over her cocktail dress, even though it was anything but drafty in the casino.

“Trust me,” she said, in response to James’s impatient look.

* * *

 

Ben did a double-take as they approached. The brightness of his eyes paired with his grin told James that he was right to trust Evvie on the leather jacket thing. He actually looked away from his slot machine long enough to pull his wife to his side.

“How is it going for you?” he asked loudly, over the annoying dings and chimes of the slot machines. “Losing terribly?”

James stepped up behind Evvie and gently nudged her spine with his elbow. She looked down at Ben, and with their eyes locked, responded: “Yeah, _fuck_. It’s not going well at all.”

Ben gave a little jump. He looked around them, visibly thrown by her profanity. He swallowed.

“I’m sorry. Want to try a slot machine?”

“No.” She seemed to be struggling with finding places to sneak swears in. James elbowed her back again to prompt her. She shot her elbow back at him, catching his rib. He gave a quiet grunt of pain. “My back is aching, though. I think I’ll sit.”

Ben pulled the stool in front of the neighboring vacant slot machine out and patted it. Evvie hopped up. James was kneading unhappily over his rib as he heard his friend give a moan. Even _he_ felt his cheeks heat up at the sound. It was followed by another profanity, just as breathless as before, and Ben was _definitely_ giving Evvie every bit of his attention now. He turned to face her completely.

“Your back hurts that badly?” he asked, concerned. “What did you do to it?”

“Some idiot was elbowing me.”

“What?! Who?! Him?!” he pointed at a buff man with bulging muscles standing behind them. “James, was that who elbowed her?!”

“What, are you going to fight _him_?” James said, amused.

“Of course I am!” And then, before James could stop him, Ben turned around completely on his stool. “OI! YOU!”

“ _NO_!” Evvie and James cried. Evvie quickly pressed her mouth to Ben’s while James caught the man’s eye.

“Is he talkin’ to me?!” he boomed.

“No, to me! He…despises me. We’re going to fight. Have a nice night!”

The man made a rude hand gesture in response. James scowled. _Up yours too, then_.

When James turned back to his friends, he found Evvie already nearly done with her mission. Ben had his hands fisted in her hair and didn’t seem to hear the incessant dinging of his slot machine. While Evvie pulled her lips from Ben’s for the sake of whispering something to him, James leaned over and casually grabbed all of Ben’s paper tickets off the floor. He thumbed through his friend’s winnings while Evvie continued whatever naughty speech she was giving into Ben’s ear. By quick mental calculation, Ben had won twice as much as James had lost. _Damn_.

“Ben, do you care if I have a go? Are you done?” James asked.

He glanced towards his friend when he failed to respond straightaway. Ben was red in the face. His hands were resting low on Evvie’s hips. She was semi-innocently running her hands down his shirt, fingering the buttons as she did, her hips following Ben’s guiding touch as she stepped between his opened legs. Ben’s blood was surely migrating south so quickly that James could’ve smacked him in the head and he probably would’ve only managed a blank ‘wha?’.

“Ben? James asked if you’re done playing?” Evvie asked him.

Ben looked about two seconds from pinning her against a slot machine, never mind continuing his own game. Judging by the pinkness to Evvie’s complexion and her somewhat glassy eyes, she hadn’t been as impervious to her own actions as she’d probably hoped she’d be.

“Yep. Done. Don’t care. Have it. Evvie, do you want to…?”

“Absolutely,” she said breathlessly.

It was a better outcome than James could’ve imagined as _both_ hurried from the casino. Chuckling, and running his thumb along the edge of the stack of paper winnings, James returned to find his wife surrounded by two buckets full of coins. She beamed as he came to stand beside her.

“Jamie! How’d it go?”

“They’ve _both_ left,” he sniggered. “And I’ve confiscated Ben’s tickets.”

She turned around to look at him fully, her delicate eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Seriously?! Nice job!”

“You as well!”

“Well, it was better earlier. I switched to that machine over there which had actual paper money left in it and won _loads_ , but then I couldn’t seem to stop putting more and more coins in…and I lost about half of it…still, I think I’m coming out on top.”

James watched her put a few more coins in. He leaned against the nearby machine and let his eyes fall down her lithe frame. He admired the plunging neckline of her dress for a few moments. The concentrated way she examined the machine before dropping another coin in made his heart flutter.

“You know, they left here with nothing, which means we win no matter what,” he said.

She frowned at the machine when she failed to score any more coins, as if the machine had personally insulted her. James inched closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. He lowered his face and kissed the exposed center of her chest. She ran her fingers gently through his hair as he did.

“Let’s consider this a win for our future kids, go grab the mirror from our room, get a coffee, go get some lounge chairs on the top deck beneath the stairs, and see if the kids are awake yet,” James mumbled.

She responded as if he’d whispered explicit, toe-curling dirty-talk into her skin. She cupped his face and pressed her lips to his in a searing kiss. James felt loved from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. He held her close as they walked slowly to their room to grab the mirror.

“I was really worried, but I’m so glad we did this,” he admitted. “I’m so glad we took time for ourselves.”

His anxiety was helpful in many ways, but perhaps learning to work through it and ignore it sometimes was helpful, too. He’d have to remember that once they returned to the real world. Once they had to begin dealing with whatever was happening with the babies of their world and therefore, by extension, the future of it, too.


	4. I. Round Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Ginny learn to appreciate the unique challenges of parenting adult children. The Potter grandkids become a source of custodial tension. Albus gets some questionable advice. And nobody really knows where Lily is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've posted chapter five as well! Chapter six will be from Scorpius's POV. Thanks to all who have read, commented, and/or left kudos!

“All right,” Harry snapped. The sound of his book landing hard on the table followed. Ginny sighed and brought the heel of her paint-spattered hand to her forehead in exasperation. She kneaded over her skin tiredly. _Here he goes_ , she thought, and sure enough:

“That’s an _hour_ late now! An _hour_!”

Ginny set her paintbrush down on the tray, held securely onto the ladder, and then looked over her shoulder at her husband. He was pacing in front of the fireplace now, his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest.

“Harry,” Ginny said, for the third time that hour. “I’m sure they just lost track of time. They’ll be here.”

“What’s the point in setting hours and drop times if they’re just going to show up whenever they damn well please? This is _our_ time they’re cutting into! We don’t take _their time_ with the kids, do we? No. We don’t. We’re _uncharacteristically_ organized! We always have them where they’re meant to be when they’re meant to be there! And we don’t short people on time!”

“You know who you sound like?”

He grumbled and didn’t reply. Ginny continued anyway.

“You sound _exactly_ like my recently divorced colleague, who’s currently fighting over visitation and custody rights with her ex. Let me make this very plain. Dean and Seamus are not our competition.”

Harry scoffed and squinted at her from behind his glasses as if he had no idea what she was talking about. In reality, Harry had been subconsciously one-upping Dean and Seamus from the start. If they took Evra for ice cream on Saturdays, he took Evra to a muggle ice cream factory on Sunday. If they bought Evra a stuffed toy, he bought Evra a hand-painted tea set. With every grandchild they were blessed with, the one-upping became more and more noticeable, until Ginny was certain Dean and Seamus were catching on. She didn’t think it was a coincidence that it had started right after the Transfiguration professor made a comment about grandkids almost always being closer to their maternal grandparents than their paternal (something Ginny’s mum grumbled about from time to time whenever Ginny’s brothers’ kids were at their maternal grandparents’ houses instead of hers).

“No, but they _have_ stolen our grandkids for an hour.”

“They are _their grandkids too_ ,” Ginny reiterated. She turned around on the ladder and let herself sit on the top step. She was sensing this was going to be a long conversation. “Those kids are twenty-five percent you, twenty-five percent me, twenty-five percent Dean, and Seamus has absorbed the remaining twenty-five percent through hard work, dedication, love, and nappy changing.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works…”

Ginny ignored him. “I get that you’ve got this subconscious _thing_ about Dean. All right. I can’t really say anything—I still have the urge to roll my eyes whenever I pass by Cho in public. But he’s got _way_ more reasons to resent you than you’ve got to resent him.”

“He has _not_!”

Ginny held up her index finger. “One: you slid right in and publically kissed me right after he and I ended things—” her middle finger joined her index— “Two: our son impregnated his daughter at seventeen. And what has Dean really done to you? Dated me before you did and kept our shared grandkids an extra hour?”

“He stole James and Nora and the kids and made them go on holiday with him and Seamus for the entire week of Christmas two years ago.”

Ginny felt her eye twitch.

“Oh, bloody hell!” she exploded. She stepped down from the ladder. She ripped her paint-stained apron off and threw it onto the drop cloth. “We are _not_ getting into the Christmas Clash of 2025 again! If I have to hear the phrase _Christmas snatchers_ one more time—!”

“They very deliberately _snatched Christmas—”_

Ginny felt her patience snap. She stepped over the unopened paint cans littering the floor between her and Harry. She set her hand over his mouth and stared up at him.

“Harry,” she began, her voice low. “I am _two bloody seconds_ away from hexing you or going mad. I love you—an obscene amount— but I am really at the end of my tether with the Dean and Seamus stuff. We’ve been cooped up here all weekend with the paint fumes and the builders and the _never-ending sodding noises_ , and I recognize that my temper is a little thin, and I recognize that you’ve been looking forward to the kids’ staying the night here for months, and I _know_ you’ve got a lot planned, and I _know_ the renovation delay is really inconvenient, but _things happen_. And a _thing_ is going to happen to you if you don’t give me some damn peace.”

Harry narrowed his green eyes. Ginny lowered her hand from his lips and studied the depths of his eyes to determine how he would react to that.

“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll stop talking, then.”

Surly, then. Great.

“If you could stop talking about Dean and Seamus, yeah, that’d be great,” she said coolly. He looked away from her, his jaw working. He dropped his eyes to his feet. When his shoulders curved forward and his posture grew a bit defeated, Ginny realized that he was actually _upset_. “What is this all about—really? The grandkids _adore_ you. I don’t understand why you’re acting so…” Ginny trailed off, searching for the right word. “ _Possessive_.”

“I’m not—”

“Harry.”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. Ginny waited.

“I was talking with Vivienne when I was at the Ministry on Thursday. She said her son’s moving to Japan in a month.”

 _Ooh_. Ginny felt the tension and irritation balled up tight in her chest loosen. She frowned. She took another step forward and reached back up, this time to brush Harry’s wild hair back from his forehead. She lightly brushed her thumb over his scar afterwards.

“And I’m guessing her son is taking her grandkids with him,” she realized.

Harry didn’t say anything, but he tightened his crossed arms uneasily.

“And it probably doesn’t help that Lulu’s all the way in New Zealand.”

He tightened his arms even more. He looked off to the side (as far away from her probing gaze as he could look). He was standing so tensely that, for a ridiculous moment, Ginny was reminded of a jack-in-the-box; the tension was sure to give way at any moment.

Sure enough, the words came gushing from him only a few moments later.

“They’re our kids even if they’re adults. And our grandkids—they aren’t our kids, but I swear, Ginny, I love them as good as. And I hate how…well…I hate that we can’t keep them with us. Lu’s left and we hardly see her. And when she’s here it’s never for long enough. And I’ve realized that James and Nora could technically go wherever the hell they want whenever they want to and we could lose them and their kids. Albus and Scorpius could run off to France. I couldn’t handle it—having my family so spread out. I feel as if I only just got this family and now it feels so…uncertain. So yeah, I will get upset when I’m cheated out of time with our grandkids, because I never know how much time I will really have with them. The future is so…” he trailed off.

 _Oh, Merlin. Is he having a mid-life crisis?_ Ginny really hoped not, but she knew him well enough to know better than to ask it. Instead, she reached for him and pulled him into a hug. Thankfully, he not only accepted it; he melted into it.

“Maybe James and Nora will decide they really like the beach and will move far away,” he mumbled into her paint-splattered shoulder.

“James can’t move to the beach because James doesn’t have the patience to take sun potion like he’s supposed to. He’d fry.”

Harry didn’t laugh. He apparently wasn’t in the mood to mock the kids good-naturedly. Ginny bit back the Lily joke she had planned, realizing that it would most likely fall on deaf, unappreciative ears. She’d save it for later.

“James isn’t going anywhere,” she said instead. “And, incidentally, in this case, it’s a _great_ thing that our grandkids are close with both sets of grandparents; that’s _two_ reasons to never move away.”

“Unless Dean or Seamus move and convince Nora to move with them.”

“Why would Dean and Seamus move? Dean’s got _two_ successful art studios—one in Muggle London, one in Diagon Alley. He’s not going anywhere.”

Harry didn’t seem very comforted even though that made a lot of sense, which led Ginny to believe that this was really about Lily more than anything.

“We knew for years that she’d leave us.”

He made a strangled noise that seemed to be the beginning of a sentence he’d changed his mind about speaking. Ginny gave him some time, and when he finally straightened and found the right words, they were everything she’d been feeling, too.

“It wouldn’t be so hard if I felt she could handle being on her own. It seems like she can’t stop getting into trouble in every single aspect of her life. Professionally, socially, even physically with all the burns and such…I’ve never known anybody to be such a magnet for trouble.”

Ginny gave him a dry look.

“Okay. I’ve never known anybody _without_ a horcrux inside of them to be such a magnet for trouble.”

“Yeah,” Ginny allowed. She sucked in a breath. “Harry, I never thought I would say this. But I think…I think I’m going to finally read that parenting book Hermione gave us when I was pregnant with James.”

“Don’t bother,” Harry said miserably. “I read it last night. It wasn’t helpful.”

Ginny gaped. “You’re joking! Please tell me you’re joking!”

“No. I just…I felt so horrible about what Lulu’s going through and I didn’t know what else to do and—”

“No,” Ginny interrupted urgently. “I mean—it wasn’t helpful?! You’re serious?!”

“Oh,” Harry said. He scowled. “No, it was rubbish. Whoever wrote the book has very clearly never had a difficult child.”

Ginny felt genuinely gutted, like she’d just suffered a deep loss. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and looked off to the side.

“But I…that was my plan B,” she admitted, her voice small. “I kept it around like my little…parenting emergency kit. I mean, I doubted I’d ever read it, but it always felt nice to know that it was there just in case. And it’s…not even helpful?!” A wave of irritation passed over Ginny. “Did Hermione even read it before she gave it to us?!”

“Absolutely. It was unhelpful because it’s the same word-for-word rubbish Hermione subjects us to every time one of our kids is naughty. I think she’s memorized it. We didn’t know it, Gin, but we’ve been getting that book read to us for over two decades.”

“Unbelievable,” she said. “That’s just…that’s just complete shit. Now what?”

“If we’re going by the Hermione Book, we’re supposed to sit Lily down in a quiet, secure environment and open up a…‘mutually vulnerable and permissive dialogue’ about our deepest emotions and fears. And then we’re supposed to firmly—yet lovingly—tell Lily exactly what we expect of her behavior-wise.”

Ginny snorted. “Yeah, all right. Hermione can do that for us, then. She’d only last ten minutes in a room with Lulu if she was trying to get Lily to talk about her ‘deepest emotions’.”

“Ten minutes? That’s generous,” Harry muttered.

“No, yeah, you’re right,” Ginny said. She pursed her lips. “I suppose this means we’ve only got one choice left. Our preferred method of parenting.”

Harry heaved a sigh. He reached up and set his hands on her shoulders. “Wing it?”

“Wing it,” she agreed, her hands rising to settle on top of Harry’s. “With luck, we can get Lily patched up just in time for her to return to New Zealand.”

“Just in time for her to return there and re-injure herself, you mean,” Harry grumbled.

Ginny couldn’t fault him for the personal way he took Lily’s injuries. It was difficult for her to see their daughter so injured, too. Every burn pained her.

“You know, maybe the opposite of your worries will happen. Maybe Lily will take this holiday to really think about what she’s been through and then decide to move back home with us,” Ginny said.

It only took her a few seconds after the words left her lips to really consider what she’d said. She snapped her eyes to Harry, horrified. Thankfully, he looked just as disturbed at the idea of having the kids move back in full-time.

“On second thought,” Ginny said. “New Zealand’s not _that_ far.”

“No,” Harry agreed quickly. “Could be worse. Could be farther.”

“Er…no, Harry, New Zealand is _literally_ the farthest place from us. Literally.”

“…Could be the moon….” Harry trailed off and looked at her seriously. “I don’t want them to go anywhere away from me, but I _don’t_ want them back in the house. We swore they would never stay for longer than a week or two after the tape measure incident.”

“Fair,” Ginny nodded. The last time all three of their adult kids had stayed overnight, the kids had gotten into a spectacular (and disturbing) row over whose sex life was best. Ginny still wasn’t exactly clear on who’d brought the topic up or how it’d turned into an argument (though she was sure the firewhisky the kids had with dinner had helped spur things along), but she had learned things about her kids that night that she _never_ wanted to know. And she’d certainly never imagined even in her wildest nightmares that she’d _ever_ have to break up a near fist-fight between her two youngest over whose boyfriend was better endowed.

“The grandkids, though,” Harry said, a smile blooming on his face. Ginny looked back to him and accepted the reprieve from the memory she’d been replaying. “The grandkids can stay with us.”

“The grandkids are angels,” Ginny agreed at once.

“Hence the open invitation. Why weren’t our kids ever this sweet?”

Ginny stared at Harry for a long moment, torn between disbelief and amusement that he’d even bothered to ask that.

He nodded. “Stupid question. It’s just strange because our grandkids are Potters, but they don’t ever do Potter things, like setting buildings on fire or jumping from brooms or—”

Ginny quickly set her palm over his mouth. “Harry, for the love of _Merlin_ , do _not_ finish that sentence. You’re going to jinx it. Can’t we just have sweet, kindhearted grandkids without questioning why they aren’t running rampant like wild animals?”

“...No. Not really. Because it’s so _unnatural_. Though, you know, this’ll be the first time we’ll have them overnight without their parents here, too. Maybe they’re secretly little devils.”

Harry and Ginny mulled that over for a moment, their eyes locked.

“Nah,” they decided.

* * *

 

“Sorry we’re late,” Dean greeted. He was hunched over at the waist as he stepped through the kitchen door, thanks to Evra sitting atop his shoulders. Dean was so tall (and Evra too for her age) that had he stood straight, she would’ve smashed her head into the sloping ceiling of the kitchen. Ginny immediately opened her arms as Seamus followed in after Dean, Delilah in his arms and Henry and Finnigan at his side. As soon as Henry and Finnigan had cleared the doorway, they ran full speed into Ginny’s opened arms. She gathered them close and kissed their hair, her heart inflating with joy at the sight of them.

“My boys!” she cooed. She didn’t even care how sentimental she sounded; she was just glad they were here. She kissed their little faces two more times, smiling at their overlapping, overjoyed giggles as she did, and then she stood up and reached out for Delilah. Harry had already tugged Evra from Dean’s shoulders and was hugging her close.

“It’s fine,” Ginny told Dean, when she realized Harry was _not_ going to say it. She smiled down at Delilah as she took her from Seamus (she didn’t think she imagined his reluctance; he crossed his arms uneasily once the baby was pulled from them). Ginny’s world narrowed in on Delilah (it was an effect only babies, kittens, and the odd baby dragon had on her), and for the next few moments, she was entirely deaf to Dean and Seamus as she stroked Delilah’s soft curls and bounced her gently in her arms. She felt her heart swell large enough to fill every single metaphorical space in her chest as Delilah smiled and gave a few soft coos. She spotted James’s dimple. She was pretty sure she was never putting Delilah down ever again.

“Little darling girl,” she said softly. Delilah’s smile only grew at the endearment. “You’re the happiest baby that ever lived, isn’t that right? Yes! Yes, it is, you’re just the happiest, sweetest—”

Ginny’s baby-talking was rudely interrupted.

“Ginny,” Seamus said. “I thought the renovation was supposed to be finished on Friday? They’re still levitating and duplicating walls on the south side of the house.”

“Ginny!!” Finnigan stepped between Seamus and Ginny and jumped up and down in place. “Ginny, I threw _darts_ at balloons filled with paint! I hit _so many_!”

“Yeah!!” Evra exclaimed. Ginny looked up at her granddaughter. She still had her arms looped around Harry’s shoulders (and that’s probably where she’d stay for a while). “My art looked like three little baby clouds and a mama cloud!”

“Mine _blue_ ,” Henry said earnestly. He tugged at Ginny’s dungarees. She reached a hand down and cupped his cheek in her hand. He smiled at her as she stroked his cheek.

“Yours was blue, Henry?”

“Yes!”

“How exciting!”

“Ginny,” Seamus pressed, as a sudden _boom_ shook the walls. “The construction?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ginny said. She looked up from her grandson and met Seamus’s eyes. “We’ve been having issues with our new muggle neighbors. They keep letting their kids traipse through the woods into our garden. The renovation team isn’t allowed to do work in view of muggles, so they’ve been having to work slowly at night, which has been…as enjoyable as it sounds for Harry and I. We’re hoping they’ll finish today…some ‘mysterious’ Legoland tickets turned up in their postbox, so the muggle kids have been gone all day and should be ‘til late tonight.” 

Dean toed one of the buckets of paint by the door. “You’re painting?”

“Yeah, felt like doing something a bit different with the kitchen,” she affirmed. She pointed up at the soft white she’d managed to actually get on the walls instead of her clothing. 

“Do you really think our grandchildren should be in here breathing in these paint fumes?” Seamus pressed. _Oh_. Ginny realized where they’d been going with this line of questioning. She held Delilah to her more securely, as if one of them might walk over and snatch her. She was starting to understand Harry’s annoyance.

“Sure, why not? Nora turned out all right, didn’t she, and she spent most of her childhood in Dean’s studio inhaling paint fumes.”

Seamus parted his lips to argue further, but couldn’t seem to come up with a counter-argument.

“Where will they sleep?” Dean pressed. “If the entire south side is being worked on.”

“We’re hoping they’ll be done by tonight,” Ginny repeated. “And it’s the grandkids’ room we’re adding in, so if they’re done by tonight, problem solved. If they’re not, they can sleep in one of our kids’ old rooms.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “What are you getting at here, Dean? Are you suggesting they shouldn’t stay with us?”

“Yeah,” Dean admitted. “I mean…it’s a bit chaotic in here. Why don’t we keep them for another night? That way you two can get everything together without having to worry about kids running underneath your feet.”

Ginny glanced sideways at Harry. He was already looking at her. _Christmas snatchers!_ , she heard him say. He didn’t even need to speak. She turned back to Dean and Seamus.

“I think you’ll find that an ability to feel at home in chaos is a Potter-Weasley trait. They’ll be fine.”

“Will they?” Dean pressed, skeptical, his eyes on Evra, who’d jumped and cringed into Harry’s shoulder at another sudden _boom_ caused by the construction workers. Ginny hardly heard the noise anymore.

Harry cuddled Evra close and glared at Dean. “They _will_ be fine. They’ll be with us. We’ve got an entire day planned.”

“What are we going to do?!” Finnigan asked. He and Henry walked over and stood in front of Harry expectantly, their brown eyes shining with excitement. Ginny looked up at Dean as Harry kneeled and began whispering conspiratorially with their grandkids. Judging by the gleeful (and slightly menacing) cackles Finnigan was giving, he liked whatever Harry was plotting.

“They look all right to me,” Ginny reassured Dean. She smiled tightly. “Thanks for dropping them by! Bye!”

“Bye? I could use a cup of—”

“Can’t,” Ginny said. “Kettle’s out of commission. I’ll walk you back out to your car. Evra, Finnigan, Henry— say ‘bye’ to your Dean and Seamus!” Ginny held her hand up and mimed waving goodbye for baby Delilah. “Say ‘bye, bye’, Delilah!”

She basically pushed Dean and Seamus through the kitchen door. They kept shooting reluctant, longing looks back at the grandkids. When Ginny had finally gotten them out of her house, she lightly backhanded Dean’s shoulder.

“Hey! What was that for?!”

“Dean, whether you like it or not, we’re permanent parts of each other’s lives now. Your daughter is my daughter and my son is your son. I, for one, certainly never saw that happening—us sharing kids—but it has, and now we also share grandkids, and there are specific ways _this half_ of the family works. In the spirit of family and togetherness and…other warm shite, I have to inform you that attempting to steal our time with our grandkids is definitely against the natural order of things, and will only create unnecessary family drama that will almost _certainly_ end up ruining Christmas dinner. And I really don’t want to end up throwing sprouts at your face.”

“Don’t throw sprouts at his face,” Seamus scoffed, aghast. “What are you—thirteen?”

“You two are making a bit of a reputation for yourselves as grandkid snatchers.”

“What?! We do no such thing!” Dean said, offended. “We see them as much as you do!”

“No,” Seamus bit. “If anything, _you_ get to see them more than we do!”

“That’s rubbish! You see them every single weekend!” Ginny cried.

“And so do you and Harry! _And_ you’ve got them in your office during the week!”

“I _only_ watch them in my office when James has important meetings! You and Dean watch them during the week sometimes for that same reason!”

“No, you definitely end up watching them more than we do, which is _rubbish_ because their mum is _our_ daughter and that makes us slightly _more_ their grandparents than you!” Seamus snapped.

Ginny’s jaw dropped. Dean had been drawing his hand across his throat, a signal for Seamus to stop, but he’d missed the gesture. Seamus had uneven, red patches blooming over his cheeks. Delilah gave a coo, her hands reaching for Ginny’s wristwatch. Ginny shifted the baby so Delilah could reach forward and fully explore the object. She could feel anger and pain mingling in the pit of her stomach.

“You’d better be glad Harry didn’t hear that,” she finally said.

“So what if he did hear that? It’s true!” Seamus persisted.

“How exactly are you _more_ their grandparents than me? Let me explain sex and reproduction to you, Seamus. The father gives _half_ the—”

“Okay, that may be true, but there would be no grandkids if it weren’t for _our daughter_ carrying them and birthing them.”

“And the grandkids wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my son…well, you know.” Ginny did have to admit that that sounded a bit weak in comparison to Seamus’s statement.

“Oh, come on, Ginny,” Seamus said. He was growing more and more annoyed with every second. “It’s the same in your family, isn’t it? Your kids are closest to your parents.”

Ginny could feel her face reddening rapidly as her anger got the best of her. “Seamus, _they’ve only got my parents_! Harry’s parents are dead, you idiot!”

That made him pause for a moment. “Well, even if they had both sets, they’d still be closer to yours, because you’re the mum.”

“Are you insinuating that kids always prefer the mum?”

“No offense to your son, he’s a decent dad, but yeah.”

“Seamus… _YOU ARE A DAD_. You’re literally undermining your own importance right now in your quest to undermine ours and James’s.” Ginny narrowed her eyes. She stepped forward and pushed a finger into Seamus’s chest. “And James is a _phenomenal_ dad! Don’t you ever call him ‘decent’ again!”

“Yeah? Or what?” Seamus challenged. 

“Or I’ll tell Nora!”

Seamus parted his lips to retaliate, but Dean quickly stepped over and set his hand over Seamus’s mouth. “Don’t. Come on, this is getting out of hand. Ginny, you and Harry have a right to see your grandkids.”

“We have just as much of a right as you two do to see our grandkids,” Ginny corrected sharply. She didn’t miss his particular wording.

“Seamus only means…well, you accused us of stealing them, but we feel like that’s exactly what you and Harry do.”

“We most certainly do _not_!”

“Neither do we!” Dean shot back. “You two are the ones who take Christmas every year.”

“OH! Oh— _oh!_ You’re going to go there?! You’re actually going to go there?! LET’S TALK CHRISTMAS, DEAN!”

Harry stuck his head out of the kitchen door. “Is everything all right?”

“FINE!” Ginny and Seamus chorused _._

Harry slowly withdrew back into the kitchen.

“ _You two_ were _Christmas snatchers_!” Ginny exclaimed, sounding every bit like her husband. “You took James and Nora all the way to _Mexico_ two Christmases ago!!”

“And that’s the only Thomas Christmas we’ve had! Because they’re always _here_!” Dean said.

“So are you two!”

“Only because if we didn’t come here we wouldn’t get to see our daughter on Christmas!”

“GINNY!” Evra’s voice distracted the three adults. Ginny turned around immediately. Her granddaughter was beaming in the kitchen doorway, her beautiful curls extra-wayward, almost certainly from Harry spinning her around in his arms. “We’re going on a _family flight_!! C’mon!”

“I’ll be there in a moment, Evra!” Ginny promised. She turned back around. She narrowed her eyes and examined Dean and Seamus. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“No, it’s not,” Seamus shot back.

“We need to have a proper conversation about this,” Dean said, his lips pressed into a thin, annoyed line. “Us, you and Harry, Nora and James.”

“I look forward to it,” Ginny sniffed. “Drive safely. Be careful not to steal the other lane from the other drivers.”

“Oh! That’s rich!” Seamus said. “Have fun flying! Be careful not to steal anybody else’s daughter from them!”

“I haven’t _stolen your—_!”

“GINNY!” Finnigan yelled impatiently. “HARRY SAYS ‘COME ON’!” A pause. “BUT THAT ISN’T VERY SWEET, SO…COME ON…PLEASE!”

Ginny shot one last stern look at Nora’s parents, turned, and headed towards the house. She was seething as she stepped inside. Harry set his hand on her arm and looked down at her, concerned.

“What was that about?”

Ginny gritted her teeth. “You’re right,” she managed. “They _are_ Christmas snatchers.”

“Told you.”

* * *

 

“I can’t believe he still does that,” Harry hissed from the corner of his mouth. Ginny was struggling with all her might to keep from laughing. It was only her deep love for her grandchildren that kept her from it. She and Harry floated side-by-side a few inches from the ground and stared at Finnigan, who was hanging upside down from his training broom by his arms and legs like a sloth. It was effectively the end result of a Sloth Grip Roll, but Finnigan hadn’t done it to avoid a bludger; it appeared to be the actual way he rode a broom. He had somehow worked out a method of getting it to fly like that. He would slide backwards slightly and redistribute his weight to make it go forwards and slide forwards to make it go backwards. Ginny was absolutely speechless.

“Finnigan,” Harry began gently. He nudged his own broom forward; Delilah gave a shrieking giggle the second they began flying again, even if it was at the slowest of paces. Harry stopped beside their grandson. “Have Mummy or Daddy taught you the _other_ way to fly on a broom?”

“Yes. It’s weird,” he told Harry. “Watch this.”

He began swinging his body from side to side, which caused his broom to immediately start turning in confused circles, clearly baffled by the odd distribution of weight being applied to it. Finnigan hooted with laughter as the broom spun him around and around and around. Ginny was wincing, certain his grip would loosen any moment and he’d go falling to the ground. Luckily, he couldn’t go high enough to hurt himself, though she grabbed her wand just in case she needed to do a cushioning spell despite.  

Harry met Ginny’s eyes. It was too much. They both collapsed into laughter at the same moment. Henry giggled along from his place in front of Ginny.

“HARRY! MY HARRY!” Evra called. She’d been the lucky one given a _real_ broom and was now floating a couple feet above them. Harry turned to her at once. “I CAN DO A ROLL!”

Ginny’s lips parted in surprise as Evra hugged her broom and promptly turned her body to the left, pulling off a semi-decent barrel roll. Harry was gaping when Ginny darted her eyes to him.

“Did you…just see that?” Ginny hissed.

“I did. I saw that,” Harry affirmed. He flew up towards Evra, a smile breaking over his features. “Evra, what a _brilliant job_! What a brave girl you are!”

Ginny was left staring dumbly at her granddaughter, wondering how a little girl who thought the Floo was absolutely terrifying could muster the courage to do a mid-air roll several feet from the ground. There was only one answer: Ginny’s namesake had inherited her Quidditch skills. Ginny grinned smugly.

“See, Seamus,” she muttered under her breath. “They’re _just as much_ mine…bloody idiot.”

Henry turned around and looked at her, his eyes wide. _Bollocks_. Ginny pulled Henry closer, held him securely, and immediately began turning them around in her own mid-air rolls, hoping it’d make him forget what she’d just said. Judging by his amused giggles, it was successful.

“Evra,” Ginny said, as soon as she’d turned herself and Henry right-side-up again. “Let me see that again!”

Soon, both Finnigan and Evra were showing off by rolling around and around, inflating with pride at every bit of encouragement Ginny and Harry gave (and they gave quite a lot). While Harry pulled Finnigan up onto his broom so they could race Evra together, Ginny sped down to the ground and climbed off with Henry. She set him safely on the grass. She kneeled down so they could talk eye-to-eye.

“Henry,” she said. “How would you like to go on a broom all by yourself just like Finnigan and Evra?”

Henry grinned. It looked a bit mischievous for a moment, but Ginny assumed she was merely projecting her memories of Little James onto his son. She laughed as Henry promptly threw his arms around her in a tight hug.

“Yay!!” he cheered.

Ginny was fairly certain he’d never been on a training broom by himself before. She spent a few minutes helping him get used to sitting up straight and holding on. Once he looked steady (and less liable to roll right off) Ginny gave the back of the tiny broom a gentle nudge. Henry beamed. Ginny walked slowly beside the broom, watching as Henry drifted along happily.

“That’s fun, isn’t it?” Ginny asked.

“Yes!!”

“You’re doing such a great job!” She gently pressed down on his right shoulder, so he’d lean to the side. He gasped in amazement as the broom turned to the right. He turned to look at Ginny, his eyes wide. In the sunlight, his light spattering of freckles looked more pronounced, and for a brief moment, Ginny could clearly see James in his expression. And with a decidedly cheeky grin, her tiny grandson gave a cackle, leaned forward, and sped off.

“No, Henry! Oh _shit_ ,” Ginny gasped. She took off running after Henry, who’d set off at an impossible speed.

“GINNY?” Harry yelled from several feet above her.

“HARRY, HOW THE HELL DOES THIS BROOM GO—THIS—FAST?!” she gasped. She was already getting out of breath as she sprinted at a breakneck pace after Henry, who _still_ wasn’t stopping. He was headed out of their clearing, towards the woods separating them from their new Muggle neighbors. _Shit, shit, shit, shit—_

“Henry, stop! HENRY, STOP THE BROOM!” Harry shouted, panicked.

“HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO STOP IT! WE DIDN’T GET THAT FAR!” Ginny said. She realized running after him was fruitless, but she was too afraid to stop, because even if she couldn’t catch him, she _had_ to keep him in her sights. Her heart was racing. _I’ve lost my son’s child,_ she thought. _He’s going to fly off and never be seen again!_

They had a more serious problem: Henry didn’t know how to avoid trees, and he was headed right towards them. Ginny felt air whip beside her ear, and when she looked to her left, Harry was headed towards her. He stopped beside her and wordlessly passed her Delilah. As he took off after Henry on his broom, Ginny struggled to hold Delilah steady in her shaking arms. She leaned over to the right to try and apply pressure to the stitch in her side. She squinted desperately after Harry, but he’d disappeared into the trees after Henry, swallowed by the dense foliage. She wanted nothing more than to jump on her own broom and follow, but she had to get back to Finnigan and Evra.

Evra was already back on the ground when she returned, pacing anxiously, her hands pulling quite unkindly at her own hair. Finnigan was standing beside her, staring out where his brother had disappeared with his mouth hanging open.

“He’s gonna get lost and have to live in the woods like a wolf-boy—!”

“No, Evra, it’s okay, come here,” Ginny comforted. It didn’t feel okay; Ginny’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel her pulse in her face. Her legs felt like jelly. Nausea was making a permanent home in her gut. But Evra was upset, so she moved Delilah over into her left arm, forced a calm smile on her face, and reached for her granddaughter with her free arm. She pulled her to her side and kissed the top of her head. She grasped Evra’s hands, stopping her tugging at her hair.

“Don’t take this out on your scalp,” she teased. It was breathless and halfhearted, though. “Your Harry is going to catch up with him in no time. It’ll be okay.”

Evra snuggled closer to Ginny’s side. “He’s so great at flying.”

“Right, exactly. Harry’s so great at it. He’ll catch him, don’t worry.”

Despite her words of reassurance, Ginny spent the next minute or so silently fretting and coming up with a dozen horrific endings to Henry’s impromptu flight. Her head was full of horrible, anxious thoughts. She’d already started thinking ‘ _how am I going to explain this to my son?’_ when the sound of rustling drew their attention.

“YES!!” Finnigan cheered. Harry came flying from the woods, Henry in front of him and the child’s broom clutched in his left hand. He came to a stop in front of Ginny, Delilah, Evra, and Finnigan, hoisted Henry into his arms, and then dropped from his broom. His hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat; Ginny had a suspicion it was mostly from anxiety. She was horrified to see that Henry had acquired a long scratch, one that started near his left cheekbone and ended halfway down his neck. She locked eyes with her grandson, her own gaze softening. She was prepared to pull him into her arms and take him back into the house for some serious coddling when he gave that cheeky grin she thought she’d imagined before.

“ _Again_!” he said, his hands reaching out for the broom.

“NO!” Ginny and Harry yelled.

Henry jumped at their tone. Ginny pressed her palm over her frantic heart.

“Henry, let’s all go inside for lunch, okay? Quiet lunch. Evra, do you want to lead the way?”

“Okay,” Evra agreed. She turned around and addressed her brothers as she walked backwards towards the house. “Stay behind me in a queue and don’t touch each other.”

While Evra marched her brothers back towards the Den, Ginny fastened Delilah into the baby carrier on Harry’s back, to give both their arms a rest. Once Delilah was safely in place, she reached over and grabbed onto Harry’s arm weakly.

“I am so sorry, I had _no idea_ that broom could go that quickly,” she said.

Harry picked up her hand and moved it over his heart. Ginny could feel his heart thundering away.

“Can wizards have heart attacks? Can you feel a heart attack?” he gasped. “I can’t remember the last time I was so frightened. Probably when Delphi was about to kill our kids. Merlin, Gin, I can’t do this anymore, I’m too old. I’ve changed my mind. Adult kids are great. Adult kids don’t fly off through the woods and throw themselves off a moving broom because they see a dog they want to pet.”

Ginny’s heart skipped a beat. “What?!”

“Yes! He went ‘Paddy!’ and just…rolled right off! He hit a branch going down—that’s what caused the scratch. It’s lucky I caught him— _do_ you think wizards can have heart attacks?”

“I think you’re probably all right,” Ginny said. She took in a deep breath and felt her heart gradually begin to level. She turned her focus to the broom that caused this. “ _How_ did that training broom do that? It was nearly as fast as your Firebolt.”

“Yeah, I figured that one out when I grabbed it. Look at this.” Harry turned the broom over, revealing an inscription along the bottom of the broom. _Wood Broomsticks._ Underneath that, in slightly less professional engraving: _To little man Finnigan, one of a kind. X Uncle Ben._

Ginny ground her teeth. “That—sodding—Ben— _Wood_! Who the _hell_ gives a toddler a broom that can go that fast?! Oh,” Ginny said, her tone becoming deadly. She gave a humorless laugh and shook her head. “I hope he’s enjoying his damn honeymoon because he is _dead_ when he returns. His wife will win the record for youngest widow in their social circle. Stupid, idiotic…”

Grumbling beneath her breath, Ginny stalked off towards the Den, the broomstick clutched in her fist. She had half a mind to burn it.

* * *

It took Ginny a lot longer to bounce back from the terror of nearly causing a child’s death than it usually did.

Her own kids had nearly died on a weekly basis growing up, but there was something different about this time. It took her ages to get her heart rate back to normal. She didn’t know if she was, as Harry had said, just ‘too old for this’, if the fact that it was her _son’s_ child made it worse than it being her own, or if it’d just been too long and she wasn’t used to the terror, but she was not coping well. And she had to agree with Harry. Right then, she’d much rather stop Lily and Albus from strangling each other with the tape measures they were previously using to estimate their boyfriend’s privates than _ever_ have to chase a loose, airborne toddler again.

“I had a hike to the river planned, but now all I can picture is Delilah somehow falling in,” Harry hissed at Ginny. “So…Exploding Snap?”

“No,” Ginny said, haunted. She got a quick mental image of Evra’s long hair catching flame. “Think smaller.”

“Trip to the Muggle cinema?”

Ginny looked down at their grandkids. The older three were technically having lunch, though they were playing with their food more than eating it. Harry had cut their sandwiches up into little shapes and the kids were busy building a town with them; Evra had her plate arranged so the squares and triangles made little houses, Finnigan had made a flower with his diamond-shaped pieces that he was calling the ‘flower house’ (Ginny supposed that was meant to be a florist), and he was currently using the largest rectangle as the ‘Knight Bus’ to transport ‘people’ (grapes and carrots) from his ‘town’ to Evra’s. Ginny looked back to Harry as she mulled the cinema suggestion over. Delilah was eating now, so she could probably sit through a film. Evra loved the cinema. Henry might get a bit restless, but he’d definitely curl up on Ginny’s lap and take a nap before he resorted to a tantrum. And Finnigan might like something quick-paced—

“Knight bus…SNEAK ATTACK! Dragon breath! ARGGG!”

Ginny jumped as Finnigan used his ‘Knight Bus’ sandwich as a battering ram to knock over Evra’s sandwich buildings. She let out an indignant huff.

“NO _, Finnigan!_ Don’t put your germs on my _food_!”

“More dragon breath…BLAST!”

“Oh, Merlin!” Harry cried, as Finnigan’s ‘Knight Bus’ burst into flames. Evra hardly seemed fazed. She reached over her plate and smacked her glass of water. It fell over and flooded their plates, effectively extinguishing the fire.

“Flood beats Dragon Breath fire,” she said haughtily. She turned back to her plate. Without much fuss, she gently patted the soaked plate; Ginny watched in amazement as the water gradually dried up. James frequently bragged that Evra was ‘in control’ of her magic more than anybody else in her peer-group, but Ginny had secretly thought that maybe Evra just didn’t have a lot of magic in her, because she’d only seen her do accidental magic _once_ , and that was when she was three years old. But as she watched Evra casually dry her sandwiches out, she was left wondering why James hadn’t gushed _more_.

“Evra,” she said, completely distracted. “What did you just do?”

“I didn’t want my town to be burnt,” she said. She turned her wide eyes to Ginny and took an innocent bite of her sandwich. Ginny was speechless.

“Well…no, of course not, but how did you…you know. You made your sandwiches dry again all on your own.”

“‘Cause that’s what I wanted to happen,” Evra nodded.

Ginny looked helplessly to Harry. “But…Harry, did you just see that?”

“See what?” he asked. He was winding Delilah, his large hand patting her back gently, and for a moment, Ginny completely forgot what she was going to say. She hadn’t noticed until that moment how happy and, well, _attractive_ he looked in his white shirt, lovingly tending to their baby granddaughter. Harry with babies had always been her ultimate weakness. And she was _definitely_ too old for _this. No baby fevers,_ Ginny warned herself. _Don’t you dare. Don’t you even think about it. Think about Henry speeding off...or that time Lily drank an adult’s dosage of Sleeping Draught when she was three…or the time James fell out of that window at the Burrow and broke his leg and some ribs…or the time Albus was cursed and coughed blood into your face and you couldn’t help him and—_

“Are you all right?” Harry asked suddenly, his tone soft yet urgent. Ginny didn’t know what her face was showing, but if it was anything close to the pain overwhelming her heart, it must’ve looked bad.

“Yeah, sorry, just talking myself out of baby fever. It was extremely effective. When I see you being sweet with babies I forget how bloody _terrifying_ it is to raise kids for a moment. It’s a miracle ours survived infancy.” Ginny wrung her hands together uneasily. She was having a difficult time shaking the memory of Albus’s injury in his fifth year. She stood abruptly. “Actually, I’m just going to go Floo Albus.”

Henry perked up. “Alby?!”

“Yes, do you want to come along?”

“Yes!!” he cheered.

Ginny lifted Henry into her arms. He snuggled into her embrace. Ginny rested her chin against the top of his head and rubbed comforting circles into his back.

“Does your scratch feel better now that it’s fixed?” she asked him.

“All better,” he said.

“Was it frightening? Speeding all that way on your own?”

“No, I like it.”

“You like it?”

“Uh-huh. See puffies?”

Ginny smiled. She kissed the crown of Henry’s head. “Sure, you can play with the ‘puffies’ while I Floo your Alby.”

Ginny set Henry in the middle of her and Harry’s bed, coaxed the Pygmy Puffs from their various snoozing spots, and settled them down onto the bed. Henry laughed hysterically as they scampered up and down his body. They paused every now and then to nuzzle affectionately at his neck. Ginny kneeled in front of the fireplace and tossed a handful of Floo powder in.

“Potter-Malfoy flat,” she said. She focused on the hardness of the floor beneath her knees to try and keep herself from feeling nauseated. The Potter-Malfoy kitchen came into view as her head stopped spinning.

“Albus?” she called loudly. “Are you home?”

She eyed the bubbling pot on the stove. Scorpius sometimes cooked, but as far as Ginny knew, it was mostly Albus, so hopefully that was a sign that he was home. She peered as far to the left of the kitchen as she could; from the tiny bit of the table she could see, it looked as if there was paperwork strewn across the surface.

She turned back towards the doorway at the approaching sound of footsteps. Her heart swelled and warmed as her youngest son stepped into view.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. He must not have heard her calling. He smiled a second later. “Hi, Mum. Been waiting long?”

“No, a minute or so,” she reassured him. She smiled. “Still in your pajamas, I see.”

He grinned. “I don’t have to go into work today, so I figured clothes were excessive.” He crossed over to the fireplace and sat in front of it. “How’s James’s lot?”

“Unnaturally adorable,” Ginny answered. “How are you? You look a bit tired. Did the kids wear you out that badly?”

“No! Try _Scorpius_.”

Ginny arched a coy eyebrow. Albus backtracked.

“No, Mum, not like _that_ ,” he scoffed. “He’s gotten obsessed with—”

He stopped speaking abruptly. His unfinished sentence hung awkwardly in the air. Ginny cocked her head to the side and observed her son suspiciously.

“ _What_?”

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell.”

“Oh, is it something personal? Don’t, if you aren’t sure if he’d want me to know.”

“No, it’s Ministry business.”

“Oh,” Ginny said. She waved her hand nonchalantly. She really couldn’t care less about Ministry secrets. “Who cares, you can tell me.”

“Oh, that’s nice, Mum,” Albus said dryly. “I’m glad I’ve got such upstanding role models in my parents.”

“I _never_ claimed to be an ‘upstanding role model’. I’m much too cool for that.”

“…Yeah…sure. ‘Cool mum’…”

Ginny ignored his skeptical tone. “Exactly. Don’t forget it.”

Albus crossed his legs, a sign that he was planning on speaking for a while. Ginny grinned. She shifted over to sit on her bottom as well, prepared for an unraveling of juicy Ministry secrets.

“Witches have mostly stopped birthing magical babies, did you know that?” Albus said.

Ginny’s shoulders dropped in disappointment.

“Oh,” she said sadly. “I thought it would be something I didn’t already know.”

“You already knew that? _How_?!”

“I’m married to Harry Potter who’s best mates with Hermione Granger, our Minister for Magic. There’s little that I don’t know.”

“Oh, right,” Albus nodded. “I forgot Dad is rubbish at keeping secrets from you. Well, when Lily was here she was telling us about all this stuff that’s going on with the poaching—because I had to do a last minute report on another Auror’s investigations—and Scorpius is _convinced_ there’s a link between the two things—the poaching and the decrease in magical births.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow. “How does that work?”

“That’s what I thought too at first, but Lily told us one-half of the major poaching gangs are essentially using biological warfare to take the dragons down. They’re releasing a different strand of dragon pox that’s highly, highly contagious, and according to Lily, we have no idea what this disease could do to humans.”

“Oh,” Ginny said. She felt a tiny shiver of fear run through her. “That’s…not good. Is Scorpius speaking with colleagues about this?”

“He’s at the Department of Mysteries right now. He thinks he can get somebody to listen to him. They didn’t exactly take well to Lily’s brand of…lecturing.”

“Yeah, well, not many people like getting aggressively swore at or insulted; it’s an acquired taste. I’m sure Scorpius _will_ fare much better. Have you talked to your dad about this yet?”

“No, I’ve been spending all day doing work my damn boss keeps sending over. I agreed to do _one_ report to owl him tonight—and, mind you, I wasn’t even supposed to have to do that; I did what I was supposed to do and asked for my time off well in advance!—and he’s sent _three_ extra things to me today to have completed by midnight. It’s rubbish. I wish I could hex him. Just seeing his stupid face makes my wand hand itch…” Albus trailed off darkly.

Ginny was scowling. “He takes advantage of you, Al, and I don’t like it. You need to tell him ‘no’.”

“I try! I do! He honestly ignores me, Mum.”

“Shall I go and tell him no for you, then? He won’t ignore me. He wouldn’t _dare_ ,” she said darkly.

“Let me think on that…do I want my mummy coming to my department to yell at my boss for being mean to me…hmm… _tempting_ —I think it’d do _wonders_ for my popularity within the department—but that’s going to have to be a solid ‘no’, Mum.”

Ginny shrugged. “Your loss.”

Henry was being so quiet and playing so nicely that she’d momentarily forgotten that he was even in the room. When his little arms wrapped around her neck from behind, she jumped and felt her breath catch. She relaxed as soon as she got a whiff of the other Potter home (cinnamon and vanilla, always faintly following them; Ginny suspected it was from a shampoo). She reached up and held onto Henry’s hands.

“Henry! What are you up to?” Albus greeted. “Are you having fun with your Ginny and Harry?”

“I fly by myself,” Henry shared proudly.

Albus arched an eyebrow and looked to Ginny for an explanation. She grimaced.

“He might have…made a ‘great escape’. Don’t really want to talk about it.”

Albus grinned slyly. “Not as fun as you remember it, is it? Having little kids around?”

Ginny scoffed. “Are you joking? Having these kids here is like a lovely little stroll through a well-maintained park where every dog owner always picks up after their pets. Raising you and your siblings was like going to a shady Muggle teeth-doctor who doesn’t believe in pain management: painful, risky, terrifying, and there was always that vague feeling that you should probably keep an antibiotic potion on hand.”

“Wow, Mum,” Albus said, deadpanned. “I’m glad I’ve got such a sweet, warm mother, who appreciates me and all my flaws, who thinks I’m the greatest achievement of her entire life.”

Ginny blinked. “Did somebody adopt you while I wasn’t looking?”

Albus tried to maintain a stern expression, but he joined her in her laughter quickly enough.

“For the record, though, you _are_ one of the greatest achievements of my life, and I _do_ appreciate you and your flaws.”

“Soppy.”

“And yet _true_.”

Albus’s grin widened. “Did you Floo to tell me that you love me or was there another reason?”

“No, actually, it was pretty much just to tell you that I love you, now that I think about it,” Ginny admitted.

“Well, while we’re talking, I’ve got to ask…how upset was Lily yesterday?”

Ginny didn’t understand. She shook her head, confused. “What do you mean? I didn’t see Lily yesterday. I thought she was with you and Scorpius.”

Albus’s eyes widened. “Oh. _Oh_!”

“What?!”

“Well…she sort of left our flat in the middle of the night to go talk with Caden. I assumed she’d come running home to you and dad, sobbing her eyes out…you’re sure she hasn’t been there?”

“No. You haven’t seen her since she left?” Ginny felt her heart squeeze with nervousness. “You should’ve told me this sooner.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Albus said quickly. “She probably ran off to Aster’s to get blind drunk.”

“Albus, that is not _fine_!”

“For Lily it is. Has she told you what happened with her and Caden?”

Ginny should’ve been a better person and said ‘no, but it’s not your place to’. But she was dying to know what had happened. Throughout the entire wedding reception, Caden had been watching her daughter with such aching looks, and she’d caught Lily giving him some of the same glances. She guessed Lily had lost her temper and said something she regretted, something to make Caden end things.

“No…she hasn’t,” Ginny admitted. “But…I should probably tell you not to tell me.”

“You don’t sound very excited about that.”

Ginny huffed. “No, because I _really_ want to know.”

“It’s even bad for _Lily,_ and that’s saying something,” Albus muttered.

Ginny bit her lip. She sighed a moment later. “Oh…go on, then! Tell me!”

“Well—”

“Wait! No! No. No, I need to…respect her right to privacy.”

Albus looked a bit disappointed. “Really? ‘Cause I wanted to complain about her with you.”

Ginny groaned. “I _really_ want to know, but…I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”

“Okay, well, let’s just say…she _really_ messed up this time, and if Caden takes her back, he’s truly delusional.”

Granted, Ginny didn’t know _how_ badly Lily had messed up, but she didn’t think there was much delusional about Caden at all. She thought about the way she’d caught him looking at her daughter at the reception, the soft, longing looks wedged between the jealous, possessive ones. When somebody else was holding Lily, he seemed to be seconds away from falling apart. There was no mistaking it.

“No, I don’t think he’s delusional. I think he probably loves her. He’d have to. He’s put up with so much over the years. And he must think it’s worth it.”

“Only Merlin knows why,” Albus muttered.

Ginny frowned. _“I_ happen to think Lily’s worth it. She’s got her…shortcomings, but there’s nobody quite like her—and I think _that_ is a good thing, too.”

“Mmhmm, yes, but you grew her in your own body for nine months and then birthed her…I think that makes you a bit biased.”

Ginny refused to believe that her daughter was as bad as Albus often wanted to make her out to be. He could say what he liked, but her daughter was still one of the funniest, strongest, and cleverest people Ginny knew, and she was rather proud of that. She sought a topic change before she got too offended.

“Speaking of people growing babies…”

Albus blanched. “You’re kidding?! You’ve _got_ to be bloody kidding me! She’s pregnant _again_?! How?! How is that even possible?! Scorpius is going to freak out—!”

“No, Albus. No. Nora’s not pregnant. Yet, anyway…” Ginny rolled her eyes. At James and Nora’s typical rate, it wouldn’t be that much longer until she was again. “I was talking about _you_.”

Albus flushed. “I can’t grow a baby, much less birth one.”

“No, but you _can_ adopt one just fine. How are you feeling about that after playing dad for a night?”

“I’m feeling like I _really_ regret talking to you and James about this because you both keep harassing me.”

“Harassing you!? This is the first time I’ve asked!”

“…Still, I’m feeling very harassed.”

“Fine, fine, don’t tell me,” Ginny sighed. With some difficulty, she reached behind her and lifted Henry (he’d been standing behind her and resting his cheek tiredly against the back of her shoulder) and pulled him around into her lap. He curled up at once and let his eyes fall shut. Definitely nap time. Ginny rubbed Henry’s back soothingly as he drifted off to sleep. She quieted her words to a whisper so as not to wake him. “Maybe Scorpius is so _involved_ in this issue with the magical babies because _he’s_ ready for one.”

She saw a flicker of excitement in her son’s eyes for a moment. He seemed to suppress it seconds later. “No, he’s just Scorpius, Mum. He likes figuring things out and helping people.”

“Sure, but he can do all those things while also longing for a baby,” Ginny pointed out. “I think waiting is a good idea, you know. But I don’t think keeping things a secret from each other is. If he’s not ready yet, would that really be such a problem? He should feel comfortable enough in your relationship to be able to say ‘no, not yet’, just as _you_ should be comfortable enough to ask for what you want and handle being told that you can’t have it just yet.”

“You sound so much like James right now and it’s annoying.”

“I think technically James sounds like me,” Ginny corrected. Ginny glanced down at Henry when she felt his breathing even out. She wished James had been this easy to get to sleep when he was little. She looked back up at Albus. “Just wondering. Hypothetically. When you and Scorpius do start a family, Scorpius and Draco will still be all right with having Christmas with _us_ , right? As in…you’ll still come to the Den on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day and the Burrow on Christmas Day? Because we already lost James for Boxing Day and we may even end up losing some Christmases and I might have to lose my mind and turn into a stereotypical demon mother-in-law.”

“Mum, I doubt we’d suddenly decide to spend Christmases in Malfoy Manor just because we’ve had a kid. As far as I know, _both_ Draco and Scorpius are content with the joint Christmases.”

She would be satisfied with that answer for now, but she was considering getting it in writing when they actually did have a baby. She smiled at her son.

“Well, if you want to talk about it—the evil baby fever—I’m here and I understand. And if you hear from your sister, please let your dad and I know…I think I’m going to Floo Aster in a moment to see if she’s seen her…you don’t think she ran back to New Zealand, do you? She’s going to be in _so much trouble_ if she left without even saying goodbye…”

“Yeah, all right, Mum. Thanks.” There was a pause. “I love you.”

Her smile returned. “And I love you. Don’t work yourself too hard, all right? Get done what you can, and if Young gives you issues, I’m only a few floors away on Monday.”

“Mum, you’re not fighting my boss.”

“Oh, _fine…_ worth a try. Give Scorpius my love. If you two aren’t sick of kids by now, you’re always welcome to come over tonight for dinner.”

Albus scowled. “I’m actually cooking because we’ve got _other people_ coming over for dinner.”

The way he said _other people_ told Ginny they were talking about strangers.

“What? Who? Why?”

“Some of Scorpius’s colleagues and the muggle ‘doctor’ he’s friends with.”

“How does she—”

“Her sister is a witch,” Albus explained. Ginny nodded. “I’m not looking forward to it. I’m not the ‘dinner party’ type.”

“Just offer them wine and keep offering ‘til everybody’s sloshed. That’s always what your dad and I do.”

“Might have to take that advice, actually…” Albus seemed to be deciding whether or not to continue. Ginny hoped he would, and luckily, he seemed to decide that he _did_ want to talk about it with her. “I don’t like his colleagues.”

“No? Are they obnoxious?”

Albus grimaced. “No…well, I don’t know, I guess not really…it’s just…one of them makes me uncomfortable because she—for whatever misguided reason—fancies me and has done since Hogwarts years…and one of the other Healers…” he trailed off. “Well, Scorpius says he’s just like that—really friendly and touchy—but I think he fancies Scorpius. My husband, Scorpius.”

“As opposed to the other Scorpius we know,” Ginny teased. Albus scowled at her. She continued on. “I’ve got a great fix for this situation, one your dad and I are _very_ familiar with. Keep drinking ‘til it gets less awkward, any time they touch you pick up their hand and set it back on their own leg, and then when that stops being effective at fettering their advances, you climb onto Scorpius’s lap. Literally, leg over, right onto his lap. And—”

“Mum—!”

“And then you take his face in your hands and you snog him nonstop until they leave. And they _will_ leave. At first, there will be silence. Then awkward giggling. Then annoyed huffs. Then they’ll start whispering: ‘oh, maybe we should leave, Janet’, ‘No, Will, give them another moment’, and finally they reach ‘acceptance’ and just bugger off, and the best part is, you’ve already begun a really nice night.”

“This is why I go to Dad for relationship advice.”

“Who the hell do you think I’m snogging in these scenarios?! This is exactly your dad’s response, too!”

“There's no way Dad does that.”

“…I really hate to tell you this, but you exist as a byproduct of one of these nights.”

“UGH! Mum! For Merlin’s sake!”

“You know,” Ginny mused aloud. “Maybe that’s why you’re so prone to possessiveness.”

“I’m going now. To scour my mind. How would you feel if I gave you detailed accounts of my and Scorpius’s…nights?”

“First off, that was _not_ a detailed account, and if you’d like an example of what a true detailed account really is, just ask Lulu about her Friday nights. But be sure that I already know plenty more than I wanted to know about you and Scorpius. This can count as revenge for that argument you and Lulu got into over—”

Albus flushed. “Mum, we all agreed—mutually—to never talk about that. The last thing I want is Scorpius finding out. He’s shy.” Something occurred to Albus. He straightened. “And, hey, how dare you lecture _me_ on things like this when _you and dad_ regularly traumatized me my _entire_ childhood?!”

Ginny gasped. “We did no such thing! We were great and loving parents to you!”

“Yeah, and loving to each other, in a disgusting way!”

“That’s a great thing! We were modeling a respectful, loving relationship for you!”

“I could’ve used fewer examples. I got the idea by age five.”

“Name one bad thing our love ever caused,” Ginny challenged, sure he couldn’t come up with anything substantial.

“I didn’t know adults actually used the bathtub for genuine bathing until like last year.”

“…Only the boring ones.”

“GOODBYE, Mum!”

“I won’t apologize for loving your father!”

“TALK TO YOU LATER, THE CONNECTION IS GETTING BAD…” Albus slid to the left, putting him out of sight. Ginny tsked.

“All that time watching your dad and I lie our way out of conversations, and _that’s_ the best you can do? Well, work on it. Love you, Al. Good luck with your dinner party tonight!”

“Love you too, Mum, thanks,” he called, still out of sight. Ginny was laughing as she backed up from the fireplace, ending their conversation. She shifted Henry to make sure he was still comfortable before throwing yet another handful of Floo powder into the fireplace and subjecting herself to nauseating dizziness. This time, the person in question entered the kitchen the moment Ginny arrived.

“Mrs. Potter,” Aster said, horrified. She stopped in place. “Oh no. What did Lily do?”

“Damn,” Ginny said. She felt her heart inching down. “She hasn’t been in contact?”

“No, I haven’t spoken to her in nearly a week,” Aster admitted. She walked over and perched on a stool set in front of the fireplace. Her face fell. “Why?! Wait—why do you ask? Haven’t _you_ seen her?! Her Uncle Charlie sent her back home last I heard, she should be here!”

“She was—she _was_ here,” Ginny said quickly. She wanted to reassure her daughter’s best friend, but she was feeling a bit frantic with worry herself. “She showed up at the reception and ended up going home with Caden—”

“ _What_?!” Aster demanded.

“And then she went to Albus and Scorpius’s flat and Albus said she left in the middle of the night to go ‘talk’ with Caden and nobody has seen her since.”

“She’s supposed to be leaving him alone!” Aster said, infuriated. “What is she playing at?! When you find her, let me know, because I’ve got a slap waiting for her!”

“Do you have any idea where she might’ve gone?” Ginny pleaded.

“Hugo? Emi? Jillian?”

“I suppose I should Floo and ask Caden before I start Flooing her entire year—”

“Wait, you haven’t checked there?” Aster relaxed immediately. “Well, that’s probably exactly where she is.”

Ginny hesitated. “Albus made it sound like it was extremely unlikely that Caden would take her back. And I didn’t want to Floo and risk upsetting him more.”

“Albus doesn’t know Caden as well as I do.”

Ginny pulled nervously at her wedding band. “How badly did she mess up? In regards to Caden…I know about the dragons.” Ginny had a terrifying thought. “She’s not…pregnant?!”

“NO!” Aster yelped. She pressed a hand over her heart like the mere suggestion was alarming enough to make her heart race. “No. She’s just been careless with his feelings.”

“Oh, yeah, well…that’s Lily for you,” Ginny said. She heaved a sigh. “All right, I’ll check Caden’s and go from there. Let me know if you hear from her, yeah?”

“I will. Tell her to come see me when you find her.”

“I will. Thanks, Aster.”

Ginny stood carefully and settled Henry down on her and Harry’s bed. She checked her wristwatch. She’d been gone far too long; she’d left Harry to fend for himself for nearly twenty minutes now. She told herself she’d Floo to Caden’s and then give Lily until dinner to make an appearance before she began Flooing around. She kneeled back in front of the fireplace, threw a handful of powder in, and grimaced through the journey as she was rerouted to Caden’s flat. She didn’t announce herself immediately. She peered around and took stock of the living room. A blanket was lying halfway off the sofa…a book was lying face down on the coffee table…there were two mugs on a side table…

Noise on Caden’s end drew Ginny’s eyes from the individual objects. She looked around, expecting somebody to enter the living room for a few moments, but the noise didn’t seem to be getting any closer. She strained her ears and waited. Soon after, she determined the sound to be Caden’s laughter intermingled with her own daughter’s giggles. Her heart jumped in her chest. She felt a smile bloom. She couldn’t make out any of the words, but she could tell from experience that the two were almost certainly bickering; there was that quick, snappy cadence to their voices that suggested they were currently insulting each other for sport. And going by the warm, contented laughter mixed up in the midst of their teasing, things were just fine, after all.

She couldn’t wait to tell Harry. She thought about dragging him back to the Floo to have him listen himself. But eavesdropping seemed wrong and inappropriate, so she withdrew from the Floo without saying a word.

* * *

 

“This is the creepiest thing I have _ever_ seen,” Ginny greeted. “And I’ve seen some extremely creepy things in my life.”

Harry turned. He wiped some bubbles from his glasses lenses. On either side of him, standing in front of the kitchen sink, Finnigan and Evra were happily scrubbing the dishes from lunch. Ginny was horrified.

“What the hell did you do to them?” she demanded.

“Nothing! They offered to help!”

Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. “They ‘offered’. Is this like the time Albus and James ‘offered’ to do the washing up for thirty galleons worth of chocolate?”

“No,” Harry persisted. He wiped his hands on a dish towel, dropped kisses to the tops of Evra’s and Finnigan’s heads, and then approached Ginny. Ginny was still horrified by the sight of her clearly brainwashed grandkids. No kid should’ve _ever_ looked that happy to be cleaning. “I started to wash them while they were playing and they just…walked over and started helping. Just like that. Gin…I think James and Nora have them trained.”

“Trained?! Like circus animals?!” Ginny hissed, her eyes flickering towards her poor grandkids.

“No…like good kids. Manners and responsibility and such.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Ginny said. In her opinion, that was harder than training circus animals. “Wow. How do you think they did it?”

“With the blessing of Nora’s temperament? We never could’ve done that with _our_ kids, so don’t feel bad,” he said.

She hadn’t even begun feeling bad until he said that. She looked at him, her mouth agape. Realization crept up her spine. “Oh, Merlin. We’re _bad parents_! This…this is what _good parents_ look like, and we’re _bad_!” In her fit of horror, she reached out and swiped at Harry’s shoulder.

“Oi! What did I do?!”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me we were rubbish parents?!”

“We were not rubbish parents! I mean—we’re _not_ rubbish parents, because we’re _still_ parents, even if our kids are parents, too!”

“Well, if we’re not rubbish, how come our son has his kids trained to do the chores and _enjoy it_ when we were lucky if we could keep our kids from knocking each other’s teeth out?!”

“Gin, we had James, Albus, and Lily. The odds were not stacked in our favor. Imagine what we could’ve done with kids as agreeable and sweet-tempered as our grandkids…” Harry trailed off. His brow furrowed. “Well, I was trying to think of something better than how our kids ended up, but…they actually ended up pretty perfect despite. So, hey. We did a great job! Our son’s the youngest to head a department in Ministry history; our other son’s a successful Auror; our daughter’s the youngest female dragonologist to win a Conservation Award and open her own sanctuary…that’s as good as it gets.”

That _did_ reassure Ginny. “Yeah,” she nodded. “Yeah. Who cares if they’re a bit…wild? They’re ours. They’re…feisty. Spirited. Charismatic. Headstrong.”

“They’re loveable,” he added. “Well…they’re…no, yeah, they’re…mostly loveable.” He grinned cheekily; for a moment, Ginny was reminded of the grin Henry gave seconds before he bolted for the trees. “They get the loveable part from you.”

Ginny smirked. When Harry stepped closer, she shook her head.

“No, no—I’ve just been told by our son that our open affection was _traumatizing_ to him growing up,” she said. “We’ve got to do better by the grandkids.”

Harry scowled. “Traumatizing?! I’ll tell you what’s traumatizing—having your toddler son sneak into the shower without warning morning after morning! Having your baby _vomit_ into your _mouth_! Cleaning up the _obscene amount_ of nappies after your son gets rotavirus! Oh _boohoo_ , he had to watch us snog on occasion; I had to teach him how to use a toilet!”

“…See, I think this right here might be why our kids aren’t like James and Nora’s.”

* * *

“Okay, your turn, Finnigan…no…Finnigan, don’t—”

Ginny pursed her lips against laughter as she heard a massive splash, followed shortly after by Harry’s sharp intake of breath. He’d offered to supervise the boys’ shower if she bathed the girls. He’d made the mistake of assuming the grandkids would follow the same pattern as their kids when it came to bath time; it was _always_ a better gamble to choose Albus and James over Lily, as Lulu always ended up practically flooding the house during baths, but Harry had clearly forgotten that Finnigan was the one most like Lily.

“Finnigan Thomas Potter, _do not_ squirt that soap on Henry’s—oh, come on, Finnigan! Are you sure this is accidental magic because that looked pretty deliberate to me!”  

Henry began shrieking at once. When Ginny leaned back and glanced towards the shower, she saw Harry had lifted Henry up into his arms, indifferent to his Weasley jumper that was now becoming soaked very rapidly. He snatched a towel off the hook and wiped at Henry’s eyes; the soap must’ve gotten into them.

“Everything all right?” Ginny shouted. The roar of the water was loud, but Henry’s shrieks were much louder.

“Can I borrow your wand?” Harry yelled back.

Ginny tossed it towards him at once; he caught it with a rather impressive smoothness, considering he had a shrieking, sopping wet toddler in his arms. Harry reassured Henry as he directed a gentle stream of water into his burning eyes to help flush the soap out. Once Ginny was confident that Henry’s eyesight would remain intact, she turned back to her granddaughters. Delilah was having the time of her life in her bath seat; she was chewing on a wet flannel and batting at the rubber duck that kept drifting towards her. Evra was singing quietly to herself as she pulled sweet-smelling conditioner through her curls. Ginny smiled at both girls as Henry and Finnigan began bickering. Yeah– she’d definitely gotten the better deal.

“Are you ready for your comb now, Evra?” Ginny asked. Her granddaughter was about as preoccupied with her hair as Lily had been; she’d been fretting about combing it since dinner and wouldn’t let anybody forget that ‘Alby and Scorpius’ wouldn’t let her take a bath at their house (and, apparently, the two things– combing her hair and taking a bath– were mutually inclusive). Ginny had learned long ago to go with the flow when it came to hair.

“Not yet,” Evra told her, her fingers dragging through her curls without cessation. “I sing my song three times first. It’s only been two.”

“Oh, okay,” Ginny said. “What’s that you’re singing– let me hear your pretty voice!”

Her granddaughter happily obliged. Going by the soppy lyrics and ridiculous similes, James was the songwriter. Once Evra finished applying an excessive amount of conditioner–and finished her third rendition of her 'song’–she looked happily at Ginny.

“Now it’s tiger time!!”

“Okay, right,” Ginny agreed. She held up three combs, each with teeth set slightly further apart. Nora had drawn faces on them, so if you turned them horizontally, the comb teeth became the mouths of the animals. She selected the tiger-painted comb with the widest teeth. She could feel tension winding itself around her heart as she leaned over the edge of the tub and brought the comb to her granddaughter’s hair; she had many memories of early-morning fights with Lily over hair combing, and Lily’s hair typically resisted tangling. But Lily had also always loved a good fight. Evra pressed her feet to baby Delilah’s and began a silly kicking game while Ginny combed carefully through her hair section-by-section. She wasn’t the least bit distressed or irritated by the tugging on her scalp. If anything, she seemed calmer than she’d been all day.

By the time the boys were clean and bundled in towels, Ginny was feeling quite smug. She paused her combing (they were now onto the 'wolf brush’) and looked over her shoulder at Harry. She suppressed an amused cackle. Harry glared at her, as if daring her to say a word, his hair dripping water steadily into his eyes. His clothes were soaked completely through. She pressed her lips together.

“Don’t,” Harry warned.

“You look…wet.”

“Finnigan fancies himself a tsunami. Isn’t that right?” He looked sternly down at Finnigan. He was grinning mischievously.

“Harry got sprayed,” he said.

“Yes, I see that,” Ginny sniggered. “That’s what you get for trying to take the 'easy job’ and leaving me with the difficult one, Harry.”

“Yeah,” Harry said dryly, his eyes on Evra and Delilah as they sang together (or babbled, in Delilah’s case). “That looks really difficult.”

“Turns out Evra loves having her hair combed. Long hair doesn’t always equal fights to the death just to get the comb in spitting distance.”

“I always knew Lily was being dramatic.”

“That’s what I thought!” Ginny agreed. Though, to be fair, having a nice, reliable routine was probably a much better method than their method (tackling Lily to the ground when they were already running late after she’d slept on wet, unbrushed hair the night before). Ginny honestly didn’t know where James and Nora found the time to be so organized and patient, and she wasn’t sure whether she felt intimidated by their parenting prowess, or proud of her own for raising a son who could be such a wonderful dad.

* * *

 

Bedtime went suspiciously well. Harry started the muggle record player James and Nora packed, they took turns resting with each kid, and within only twenty minutes, they were all fast asleep. Ginny was relieved because she was beyond ready for bed-- she had started to miss Harry. She’d gotten spoiled these past few years; she wasn’t used to not being able to snog him whenever she damn well felt like it, and somehow knowing that she _couldn’t_ made her want to do it even more. They brushed their teeth side by side (knocking hips to try and push the other out of the way periodically), Ginny changed into her pajamas, and then they curled up beneath the covers. Ginny wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his pajama top. She let out a relieved sigh.

“The kids are asleep, the construction has been completed, the dishes from dinner are washed, and our grandkids survived another day. The day went better than I thought it would,” Harry yawned.

“It actually went even better than you think it did,” Ginny said. She rested her head on his shoulder and peered up at his jawline. She gently ran her fingers over his bare chest. “I found out where Lily is.”

Harry looked down at her. “I thought she was at Albus’s.”

“Oh. No. She was missing for a few hours, but I think I forgot to tell you that.”

“Er…yeah, Gin. You forgot to tell me that our youngest child was missing.Where is she?!”

“I’m not really clear on the whole story…Albus offered to tell me behind Lily’s back, but I said no, which I think I deserve a reward for.”

Harry cocked an eyebrow. She matched his wicked grin.

“And…?” he pressed.

“And what?”

“And what _do_ you know about all of this?”

“Oh,” she realized. “Well, I know Lily did something insensitive, which caused her and Caden to end things.”

“They’ll be back together by Christmas,” Harry yawned.

“They already are back together. She disappeared late Saturday night—or, technically, early Sunday morning—to go ‘talk’ with him. She never came back. But I Flooed through to Caden’s and saw her, Harry—or heard her, anyway—and guess what?”

He was wary. “Do I want to know this? Seriously consider whether I want to know this.”

“You do,” she said seriously. “She was _happy_.”

Harry lifted his head from the pillow and looked down at Ginny.

“Happy?” he asked. He seemed to be restraining himself from feeling hopeful.

“Yes. She was laughing—giggling, really—and they were doing their vaguely-worrying fighting thing that they do. But the important thing was that she was happy.”

“I was worried she wouldn’t be happy again for a very long time,” Harry admitted. Ginny already knew that, but she leaned up and kissed his lips comfortingly like that was the first time she’d heard the admission, anyway.

“You know something, Harry?” Ginny realized. She slid up and propped against the pillows; Harry mirrored her and did the same. He wrapped an arm around her afterwards.

“What?”

“All joking aside, I really do think we did a decent job.”

Harry’s head dropped over to rest against Ginny’s. She knew he was thinking of their kids—their _happy_ kids.

“It never really ends, does it? Parenting.”

“Absolutely not,” Ginny snorted. “They still need parenting as adults, just a different sort. _And then_ they give you grandkids on top of it!”

Harry was quiet. He reached over beneath the duvet and set his hand on her thigh. He rubbed her skin as he thought.

“Good,” he finally said. “I never wanted it to end. Not really.”

“Me neither,” she admitted.

Their sentimental moment was ruptured as the door swung open. Ginny peeked through the opening in the bed hangings and watched as the three little ones tip-toed their way across the carpet, as if they thought they were genuinely being sneaky.

“The grandkids?”

“The grandkids,” Ginny nodded.

As the kids climbed onto the bed and began weaving pitiful stories about ‘nightmares’ and ‘missing Daddy and Mummy terribly’ and any other excuse they could come up with to earn a spot in Harry and Ginny’s bed, Ginny had to admit something else.

“I don’t miss _this_ , though,” she said.

Harry propped himself up on his elbow. He was as far from her as he could get, their three grandkids stretched out between them. He sighed.

“No, I could do without the child blockade.”

They rested their arms along the pillows—above their grandkids’ sleeping head—and loosely intertwined their fingers. Ginny tiredly stroked the back of his hand with her thumb as she drifted towards sleep. It wasn’t the sort of contact she wanted (she would’ve much rather held him), but if there was one thing parenting had taught them after all these years, it was to take what they could get.


	5. I. Iset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose is not faring well. Draco Malfoy finds himself in a somewhat unexpected position.

“Okay, now…hold that steady, Rosie!”

“Mmhm,” Rose said, but she was not really listening. She was staring unseeingly out of the opened window at a bird’s nest on the third branch of a nearby tree. A mama bird was feeding two babies.

“Ready, steady…ARG!”

Her dad’s pained cry ripped her attention away from the birds. Rose jumped and straightened. She turned to look at her dad, who was now holding an extremely bloody hand, his mouth widened as he howled in pain. He dropped down from the counter and began hopping in place.

“Rose!” he cried. “You said you’d hold it steady!!”

Rose looked down at the countertop. Right. Her dad had been working on a new product. She was supposed to be holding the cutting block steady. It must’ve slipped as he went to chop off a bit more of the strange herb Professor Longbottom had provided, leading to her dad accidentally slicing off a bit of his finger.

“Sorry, Dad,” Rose said, but she found she didn’t really feel that sorry at all. But then again, she hadn’t felt much of anything since the wedding. She summoned a clean cloth from a nearby drawer. Her dad held his hand out and winced in pain as Rose wrapped the cloth around his gushing wound.

“HERMIONE!” Ron yelled. “I’VE GOT A BLOODY PROBLEM!”

Rose fell back down onto her chair. She turned her attention back to the birds outside the window. Where had the mother bird gone?

“YOU’VE ALWAYS GOT A PROBLEM…WHAT IS IT NOW?”

“I’VE CUT MY BLOODY FINGER OFF!”

“YOUR ENTIRE FINGER? HOW’D YOU MANAGE THAT?”

“A BIT OF MY FINGER! I NEED YOU!”

“OH, ALL RIGHT, THEN. I’VE UNLOCKED THE OFFICE DOOR.”

While Rose’s dad hurried off to her mum’s in-home office, Rose slid back off her seat and walked over to the window. She leaned halfway out it and looked back at the nest, but this time, she didn’t see the mama bird or the babies. There was only the bleak greyness of winter, the bite to her bones. She stood there until her arms were falling asleep from being leaned on, until her nose was numb, until her eyes were tired of being open. She supposed it was time to do something productive, but she had no work left to do. She’d cleaned the entire house. She’d cleaned Roxanne’s flat a week ago. She’d cleaned James and Nora’s house yesterday. She supposed she could go over to the Den; maybe Aunt Ginny needed help reading over _Prophet_ articles, or maybe Uncle Harry needed help in the garden. Anything to stay busy—that was the important thing. Busy or blank but never anything in between.

Rose washed the single dish in the sink, set it on the draining board, and then walked up the two flights of stairs separating her from her mum’s office. The door was ajar; her dad was sitting on her mum’s desk, his bottom lip drawn into his mouth in a grimace as Hermione dropped a healing solution on his wound.

“I thought our daughter was holding the neutralizing block—the plant has a magnetic force and it pulled the knife—ow, that burns, Merlin’s saggy—”

“Rose,” her mum said quickly, silencing Ron with a stern look. “Hello, darling. Are you going somewhere?”

Rose blinked. “What?”

“Your coat?” her mum said.

Rose looked down. Had she had her coat on all along? She must’ve, or maybe she’d grabbed it on her walk to her mum’s office. She was always doing things on autopilot these days and hardly noticing them.

“Oh. Yes. I’m going out.”

“Oh, good. Great! To Albus’s?” her mum asked hopefully.

Rose shook her head at once. “No. Absolutely not.”

Hermione gave Ron a pointed look. After a whispered argument, Ron looked over his shoulder at her.

“Rosie, your mum and I were talking last night—”

“Of course you were.”

“—and we think it would be really good for you to…well, you know. Get back into the swing of things. See your cousins and your friends. You can only hide yourself away for so long before you get a bit…”

“ _Ron_ ,” Hermione warned.

“Er…before you…well, we just think you should go out and enjoy yourself.”

“I am enjoying myself. I’m enjoying doing work and cleaning.”

“Sure, but you sound sort of…dead inside?” Ron said.

Hermione sighed and lowered her forehead to Ron’s shoulder.

“Well, sorry I’m not bursting with pep and cheer, Dad. I’m going now. Need anything while I’m out?” Rose asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, actually. My daughter? She’s about this high, she’s got an unmistakable zest for life, she loves Quidditch and cats and baking and bright colors, she cares about justice and women’s rights and animal rights and Muggle rights and loads of other things? She laughs at my jokes sometimes? She’s very clever?”

Rose was not amused. “If I see her, I’ll tell her to come home, yeah?”

“…Yeah. Yeah, fine. Bye, Rose.”

“Be careful! Where are you going and when will you be home?” Hermione asked.

“Dunno. Maybe the Den. Or the Burrow. Or some shops. I’ll let you know once I’m back.”

“Okay. Your dad will have dinner ready for you once you’re home.”

“He will? I will? I’m doing dinner tonight?” Ron demanded.

“Yes. You are. I’ve got a meeting.”

“When were you planning on telling me this?”

Hermione lifted her wrist and examined her wristwatch. “Two twenty-three PM.”

“Can I go to Harry and Gin’s and steal half of what Harry makes?”

“You can fight that out with Harry.”

“I see…” Ron said. He hopped off the desk. “Sounds good. Rose, we can go to the Den together.”

“Oh,” she said. “No, Dad, I— I think I might actually go to the shops after all—”

“Let’s go to the Den and then we’ll go to the shops together afterwards. Ron and Rosie bonding! Hermione, do you think Hugh’s done with work yet?”

“Doubt it. Doesn’t usually finish up on weekends ‘til seven.”

“Aw,” Ron said. “Well, if he happens to come by early, send him my way.”

“Sure,” Hermione said, even though everybody in the room knew that if Hugo got home early, she’d definitely keep him to herself.

* * *

 

As Rose stepped into the Den’s warm, laughter-filled kitchen, she thought to herself that she would’ve rather been dead. The intensity and honesty of that emotion floored her. For a moment, she stood still in the doorway, unsure how to proceed. But then her uncle ushered her in with a smile, and her cousin’s kids were flocking towards her with hugs and kisses, and it was time to pretend again. The emotion passed. There really wasn’t much left after that.

“Rosie,” James’s eldest son, Finnigan, said, his face shining with joy. “My mummy and my daddy are almost back!!”

“That’s great,” she said dully.

She had incorrectly assumed that that was a child’s ‘almost’ and not a literal one. So when the door opened only a few seconds later and Rose’s cousin pushed in, slightly tanned and beaming, she realized she should’ve run for it the moment she first stepped into the Den. It was too late now. She backed away from the scene as James and Nora greeted their overjoyed children. The reunion hugs and kisses were too much; it hurt to watch the tearful, ardent meetings of people who had missed each other terribly when she herself missed somebody terribly (and knew she would never have a scene like this again). Of course it was the sting of jealousy and resentment that first broke through her numbness. It was probably fitting.

Dozens of different conversations began at once, with the kids being so excited that they were reduced to shouting over each other with louder and louder voices in order to be heard, and Rose had no idea how the parents managed. But manage they did; James lifted two kids up, Nora lifted the other (even though she was already holding the baby), and if they realized they were being essentially shouted at, they didn’t show it. They carried their chattering kids out of the kitchen with unwavering smiles, leaving Rose with her dad, Harry, and Ginny.

“How are you doing, Rose?” her aunt asked. She held out a mug; Rose hadn’t even noticed she was making tea. She took it and felt a bit of relief. The warmth seeping through the ceramic and into her palms was soothing. Best yet—it gave her something to do. Rose shrugged in response to Ginny’s question and quickly took a sip. It scalded her throat going down.

“We were going to do a bit of shopping. Just, you know. Some father-daughter bonding,” her dad said. She didn’t think she imagined the boastfulness in his tone. She didn’t know how she was going to tell him that she had no intention of going shopping.

“Oh? That’s nice,” Ginny said. She set her palm on Rose’s shoulder. Rose automatically leaned into her touch, and before Rose could pull back, embarrassed, Ginny read her cue and pulled her into a tight hug. Rose felt the stillness encasing her heart crack a bit. She pressed her face into her aunt’s shoulder for a moment and allowed herself two seconds of pain. It swelled out from her heart. It flooded up her throat and it flowed down to her toes. For those two seconds, she saw her sloe-eyed girlfriend— _ex-girlfriend—_ peering towards her, tears clinging to her dense eyelashes, lips parted in soft, surprised pain, as if Rose had just punched her in the gut. Rose felt a corresponding impact of pain in her own. She had to push her aunt away before the pain turned into tears.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice a bit shaky. Nobody had asked. She backed up blindly. She stumbled back against a kitchen chair; she winced as the solid back of it made sharp contact with her tailbone.

“Rosie—”

“Don’t follow me, I’m fine, I’m just going to see if James needs any help,” she said.

She saw her dad and her Uncle Harry exchange a concerned look. Ron was very clearly asking Harry for his input. Harry nodded once. To Rose’s annoyance, Ron set off after her.

“We can help him _together_ ,” he told her firmly. He took her hand in his before she could stop him. Rose spent the entire walk towards the sitting room struggling to inhale fully. She was on the brink of breakdown and she couldn’t let that happen. The last time it had happened she’d been in bed for days. She needed to distract herself, she needed to clean or find work to do or a difficult task. Her eyes swept over the living room as they entered. The books on the far wall could be alphabetized. The photos in warm, copper frames could be dusted. The crimson blankets folded on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf could be folded a bit neater. Her cousin’s kids were climbing all over him; she could walk over and scold them. She set off towards the bookshelf first, but she was intercepted by her dad.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Alphabetizing,” she said. She stepped to the right. He stepped to the left. Her heart was thudding now. “Move.”

“You don’t need to do work. Just come sit. It’ll be okay.”

She felt like something was pressing on her lungs. She didn’t understand why, but she knew it was uncomfortable, and she was beginning to panic. “Dad, I don’t want to sit.”

“ _Sit_ , please, c’mon, Rosie,” he urged.

Her mind sped up. She needed him to get away, but she didn’t want to hurt him. She gave it her best shot. She lifted her mug up and, with shaking hands, choked down nearly all of it. She pushed it into her dad’s hands. “Will you get me more tea?”

He stared at her oddly. “More? You’re sure? That will make you feel better?” 

“Yes. Really, very sure. Please, Dad.”

“Okay,” he said. He smiled and leaned in; Rose’s eyes shut as he kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back!”

Rose paced once he left, her fingers rubbing nervously over the knuckles of her left hand. She felt frantic. She was struggling to come up with an excuse to leave when her cousin called out to her.

“Rose! Come here! What are you doing all the way over there?!”

“I’m—I—oh, I don’t know,” she said, and she heard her own voice break. Nora turned around at the sound and peered at Rose probingly. Rose’s heart rate only increased.

“Are you okay?” she asked. She didn’t seem to notice or care that Henry was climbing his way onto her shoulders, his face falling to nuzzle his mum’s hair. For whatever reason, the sight of that only made Rose feel worse. Maybe it was the openness. Maybe it was the love. It was probably the breathless joy at being reunited. “Really, come over here,” Nora urged, as James had.

Rose felt like she was walking towards the Guillotine. She was stiff as she settled down in the indicated spot between James and Nora. Finnigan was hanging halfway off James’s lap, his hair brushing the carpet, giggling wildly as James tickled his tummy. Evra was staring at a gift her parents had given her in awe, her smile so wide her eyes crinkled at the corners. Nora was attempting to nurse Delilah, but the baby couldn’t seem to decide whether she wanted to giggle and stare lovingly at her mum or actually have a meal; in the short span of time that Rose was watching, Delilah pulled back twice to offer her mum a soft, radiant smile. Maybe that could be Rose’s excuse. She stood.

“I’ll get you a muslin cloth to have for winding—”

James took hold of her hand gently and pulled her back down. “No, no need,” he reassured her. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a cloth. “Already got it!”

“Thank you, though,” Nora told her.

Rose nodded once. She gripped her knees and stared hard at the carpet. Her tension was only mounting. As Nora cooed to the baby and James began singing nursery rhymes with the elder three, Rose thought she might lose her mind.

“Daddy,” Finnigan said suddenly, right in the middle of the second round of “A Witch’s Hat for a Cat”. “We have a _new room_!”

“What?! Did the construction already finish?” James asked.

“It’s right beside _your baby room_ ,” Finnigan continued.

Henry gave an excited gasp and tumbled from Nora’s shoulders. He landed hard on Rose’s lap. She’d only just realized what’d happened when he rolled from her lap and onto the floor. He grabbed James’s hand and pulled.

“Daddy, look!” he said excitedly, clearly wishing to take James to the new room. Rose hadn’t even known they were doing construction at the Den.

“Okay, okay, let’s go!” James exclaimed. He propelled himself off the sofa as Henry gave another weak pull, leading Henry to believe he’d single-handedly yanked his own father off the couch. He gave an adorable gasp of surprise. James reached over and hoisted him up into the air by his waist, flipping him upside down a moment later; Henry’s giggles drifted down the hall long after James, Finnigan, and Henry had set off towards the stairs. Rose should’ve gone with them.

“How are you feeling?” Nora asked.

“Oh, great.”

“Oh,” Nora said. She didn’t sound convinced, but then again, she wasn’t stupid. “If that’s true, I’m really, really glad to hear it. Things’ll keep getting better day-by-day. Just hold on.”

She _knew_ Nora had genuine, kind intentions—as did her dad and James and her aunt and her mum and everybody else who refused to let her disappear into her own sadness. But it really upset her, and right then, she didn’t have the necessary mental clarity to examine why it did. She only had enough strength to react.

“You’d have no idea,” she said.

Nora didn’t say anything for a moment. Rose stared hard at her own knees, her heart thudding away, her anxiety now fueled by the confrontation she was creating.

“No, I guess not,” Nora finally said, her voice a bit cooler. Rose realized Delilah had stopped giggling. When Rose glanced over at her, the baby was holding onto her mum tightly as she nursed, her wide eyes flittering between Rose and Nora. She’d finally decided to focus on nursing, but it appeared to be more about comforting herself in the blatantly tense environment than addressing her own hunger. Rose knew babies could sense when people were upset, and she didn’t want to upset the baby—she hadn’t done anything, after all—but she was bursting apart from the inside and didn’t know how else to release those emotions (short of crying—and she couldn’t break down again).

“So you wouldn’t know if it’d get better every day. And, actually, it hasn’t,” Rose said.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Nora said, clearly weighing each word very carefully now. “Love can really hurt.”

It deeply agitated Rose to hear her cousin’s wife say that (her cousin’s wife who had probably never felt anything even _close_ to heartbreak even once in her entire life). Who was with the person she loved, who had a tidy, easy marriage, who was blessed with four healthy, clever kids, who got to come home every single night and crawl into bed with the person who made her feel whole. Nora, who didn’t have to wake up in a single bed, suffocating under the memories of watching the person _she loved_ getting sick all over the bathroom floor from grief and trauma. Nora, who never had to live her day out wondering if James was even _alive_. What did she know about pain? Who was she to sit there, in her domestic, stereotypical bliss, and pretend like she knew anything of what Rose was feeling?

“You don’t know anything about that,” Rose said, her face hot with anger now. She could feel tears sloshing close to the surface. “But you will one day. Because love doesn’t really exist, not the way you think it does. And I’m sure one day you’ll be able to tell me all about love hurting. Give it two more kids and the romance will dry up and that’ll be that. Once the sex is gone, what’s really left?”

She had never tested Nora like this. She had no idea how she would respond. Maybe she would hit her. Maybe she would scream. Maybe she’d even cry. Rose didn’t really care either way. She looked up as she felt the couch shift. Nora had shifted an arm underneath Delilah to cradle her securely in place. She stood. She didn’t even look at Rose.

“My best friend,” she said.  

It took Rose a second to realize that Nora was answering her rhetorical question. For whatever reason, the response felt like a slap in the face. She had no opportunity to compose herself before her dad, aunt, and uncle entered, a tray of biscuits and tea hovering in front of them. They’d been laughing, but it pandered off as they stepped fully into the room.

“Rosie?” Ron asked.

Rose parted her lips, but she didn’t know what to say. Her eyes had begun burning. That was the end of it.

Heavy footsteps drew their attention away from her and towards the doorway. When Rose glanced around, she found herself looking at her irate cousin.

“What’s your problem?!” he asked Rose. His mouth was set in a hard grimace. He pointed at Rose. “You have every right to be upset, but you do _not_ have the right to try to make other people feel as badly as you do! We all go through shit, Rose, but that doesn’t give you the excuse to try and drag other people down with you.”

And, well. He had a point. Wasn’t that why she’d abandoned her girlfriend in the first place? To stop from being dragged down with her?

“What’s going on?” Ginny asked sharply. She looked from James to Rose. “What’s happened? Have you two had an argument?”

“She’s been nasty to Nora for no reason,” James snapped.

“Rosie?” Ron asked, surprised. She didn’t reply. Ron looked back to James. “Well, James, if there was an argument, I’m sure Rose had a very good reason.”

Rose didn’t have to look at James to know that his eye was twitching. She knew him well enough to know what would set him off. So did his parents.

“Er, Ron, let’s…I mean, we didn’t see what happened, so…” Harry quickly said.

“I don’t need to see what happened,” Ron insisted stubbornly. “I know my Rose and she’s kind, and clever, and strong, and if there was an argument, it was because she felt there was a reason for it!”

“What exactly are you saying, Uncle Ron?”

“…I’m saying what I just said.”

While her dad focused his energy on defending her (when she really didn’t deserve to be defended), Rose stood. She caught her Uncle Harry watching her as she slipped from the room, and she didn’t know why (maybe he was taking pity on her, maybe he was angry with her for being mean to his daughter-in-law and wanted her to go, maybe he didn’t care either way), but he didn’t say a word. In fact, he moved over to block the kitchen doorway after she stepped into it, in case somebody tried to follow.

Rose was so upset that she wasn’t thinking straight. She put her hand into the Floo pot. She stepped into the fireplace. _I want to go home,_ she thought, her heart wide and aching. And then she said: “Torrington Cottage.”

She felt her heart freeze the second she heard herself say the words she did. But before she could do anything, she felt her body squeezing and twisting towards the place she’d once called home. She slammed into the fireplace of her and Iset’s cottage, hard enough to knock the breath from her chest and make her accidentally suck in a mouthful of ash. She leaned against the fireplace and coughed until her eyes were streaming. With her eyes still shut, she tried to feel her way out of the fireplace and up to the mantel, where their vase full of Floo powder rested. She’d hoped she could grab it and run back to London without looking around (without remembering). But as soon as she stopped coughing—as soon as she stepped out of the fireplace—she was accosted by the smell of home. There was no other way to describe it. She stopped and she stood. And for a very long, painful moment, that’s all she could do.

She hadn’t stepped a foot in here since the night she left Iset curled up on the sofa, crying softly into the cushions.

She had left her crying, and then she’d walked out of the cottage, and then she’d gotten sick in the bushes.

She had left her behind and she’d left herself behind, too.

The emptiness within her chest felt heavy and suffocating. Rose opened her burning eyes. She rubbed the ash and soot away from her face. And she took a step forward.

Their kitchen was as bright as she’d left it, with tangerine walls, bright, cheery curtains, and tidy counters. The pink mug Iset had used for tea the morning of Rose’s departure was still on the draining board; Rose remembered the way her stomach had been churning as she nervously washed it while waiting for Iset to return from Azkaban. The other dishes from breakfast were still with that mug. No dishes had been put away, and from looking around the kitchen, it appeared as if nothing had been touched. Despite the fact that all of their items were tucked away neatly into their proper spots, the kitchen held a slight air of neglect. Dust dressed the countertops in a fine layer. Cobwebs dangled low from the ceiling. Rose stepped forward slowly and headed towards the adjoining dining area. The raspberry paint had once made Rose feel warm, but as she turned in a slow circle and took in more evidence of inactivity, the emptiness within her chest only grew. She crossed over to the enchanted washer along the far wall. She ignored the dusty cough it gave as she eased the lid up. At once, a vile, choking stench accosted her; the last load of clothes she’d washed had never been taken out. As she’d expected, they’d stayed buried inside the machine, gradually growing a layer of mildew. Rose felt her throat prickle as she caught sight of a rose-colored jumper. Her hands jumped forward automatically to reach for it, because it was Iset’s favorite article of clothing in the world, but the overbearing stench (and the overwhelming reminder of Iset’s absence) kept her from it.

And maybe she really was losing her mind. Because she did nothing but stand there and stare at that ruined jumper, destroyed by months of abandonment. Minutes came and minutes went, and she was still hunched over, staring down into the toxic guts of a machine that probably wouldn’t ever turn on again, anyway.

“Where did you go?”

She’d thought the silence was heavy on her ears, but her own pathetic question was worse. It made her eardrums thrum painfully. Her eyes stung. A sensation was crawling up her spine. She didn’t recognize it as anger until it reached her chest and wrenched that hole wide open. Rose leaned over so the washing machine was pressing painfully into her belly. She dug her hands down into the mildewed clothes. She was quivering from crown to toe as she yanked Iset’s jumper up. It had dried in such a tangled position with the other articles that the sleeve gave a loud, jarring rip as she pulled. It only made her angrier. She extracted the bulk of it. She pulled so hard at the caught sleeve that the agitator within the machine snapped loose—she hadn’t realized the arm was stuck underneath a small part of it. Rose wrapped her fists around the molded jumper. And without considering why or what exactly she hoped to accomplish by it, she screamed. And it felt so good. So she kept at it. It was all too much to carry: Iset, Iset, Iset. What she had done to Iset. What everybody always did to Iset. She had put her back together and she had kissed her body and she had asked herself, time and time again, how anybody could have treated her like that. How could anybody have hurt her. And then she’d looked at her—suffering, back to her lowest point—and she had done what Iset always feared she would. She’d decided that Iset wasn’t worth it and she destroyed her.

Was that all her time with Iset had been, in the end?

A stroll through the woods before a bullet in the head?

To say she regretted what she’d done wouldn’t have been true.

What she’d done was eating her alive. What she’d done was its own being now, given life by the hours upon hours Rose spent replaying it. What she’d done regretted her.

She hadn’t even taken a step towards their bedroom and she already felt like dying.

* * *

 

She didn’t ever make it past the living room. She lay in the place she’d last seen Iset lay, her face pressed into the cushions as she had done, and she didn’t cry.

She thought about the fact that she would probably never see her again, and she didn’t cry.

She remembered that the very last thing she’d given Iset, after all their time together and all their love, was a stab in the back, a reminder that she’d never be anything but a burden. And she didn’t cry.

She thought about the innumerable nights spent bundled up in blankets with Iset, the rain pattering lightly against the windows, Iset’s skin warming her own, and the thoughts she had without cessation: _I could never be without this. I could never live without her. I love her. I love her._

And still, she didn’t cry.

She thought about the first time she’d seen Iset break down. The hysterical shaking of her shoulders, the tears dripping down her face, the frantic gasps for air. _I can’t trust anyone,_ she had said. _Not even myself. Especially not myself_. And she thought about the words she had said back. _You can trust me._

When the hole inside her chest burst open, it was a genuine, physical pain.

Rose wept to the point of dizziness.

The worst part wasn’t that she had become a monster.

The worst part was that this was the very first time she’d ever really understood how Iset must have felt her entire life.

* * *

It would’ve been easy to hide away in her home for the rest of the day. Maybe even the rest of the week, the month, the year. But Rose could only spend so long lying so intimately with her feelings before they became absolutely unbearable. When things went wrong, her primary coping mechanism was to fix them. She had an urge to tidy everything up, put everything back where it belonged. But she had no idea where Iset was. Albus and Scorpius hadn’t heard from her. The only place Rose could think of that she might go to would be to her old nanny’s house (Iset had lived with her over holiday breaks after her dad was sent to Azkaban). But Rose couldn’t show her face there; she couldn’t handle seeing the woman’s soft face harden. She couldn’t bear to see the blame. And most of all, she couldn’t _bear_ the thought of arriving only to find the woman in tears (because she couldn’t stand the thought of what that might mean).

That left her with few options. The most logical of them—and the one that Rose surely would’ve chosen had she not been brain-dead with grief—was to go to Albus’s and beg him to find somebody who could track her down. He was an Auror; someone within the department _had_ to have the ability to find her.

Her other option, of course, was to go to the Wizarding World Equality Union and confront Scorpius’s dad, in the hopes that _somebody_ there was still in touch with Iset. This would involve opening up to people she wouldn’t ordinarily open up to. But begging Scorpius’s dad or Lily’s boyfriend for help was much better than pleading with Albus for it. No matter what she said to Albus, she knew he would probably always blame her. And he was probably right.

* * *

 

Her prominence within the legal circles of the wizarding world made her presence at the WWEU fairly typical. Nobody looked at her twice as she navigated the curving corridors of the circular building, heading determinately to the set of offices right in the middle of it. She finally spotted the silver door gleaming at the heart of the building, like a spider resting in the center of a web, and it was then that she considered turning back around. She smoothed her clothes and let her eyes fall shut for a brief moment as she rehearsed the speech she’d composed before her journey here. If she couldn’t remember it _exactly_ how she’d written it, with every single pause and appropriate inflection, she would leave now, study it harder, and return at a later date…

But her memory was notoriously sticky. She could both perfectly picture every word of the parchment in her mind and recite it with no stumbles or faults. She had no logical excuse not to knock. And, really, she had no emotional ones, either.

She took a deep breath and reached forward. She tapped her knuckles against the door. Maybe he wasn’t in. He was the organization’s director; he was probably busy with loads of other more important things…

“Come in,” Scorpius’s dad called.

Rose’s heart was thudding irregularly as she opened the door and stepped into the office. She peered around the dark room—the walls were an odd, ambiguous shade, somewhere between charcoal grey and hunter green. There was a depth to the shade that made it feel as if Rose was walking into a much larger room than she really was, an effect perhaps achieved by the limited furniture. Scorpius’s dad smiled politely at her from behind his wooden desk. It was the same desk everybody had in their office—a standard oak with drawers on both sides and thin legs. Despite being mass produced, it seemed to fit with the décor; there was a handsome bronze lamp in place beside three solid-silver picture frames. Rose could only see the one at the end from her view, but she recognized the photo in that one easily. It was the same photo Scorpius had in his tiny shoebox office at St. Mungo’s, taken on his and Albus’s first Christmas as a married couple. In it, Draco was standing somewhat stiffly—yet contently—beside his new son-in-law.

“Rose,” Draco greeted. “Hello. Is everything all right?”

 _With the family_ , she reminded herself. _He’s not asking about your emotional wellbeing. With the family._

“Yes, everything fine,” she said. _With the family._ She was still standing in the doorway. Scorpius’s dad gestured out towards the chair in front of his desk. Rose had no excuse not to walk over and sink down into it. She pushed her hands between her knees and looked everywhere but Draco Malfoy as she tried to work up the courage to begin her spiel. He didn’t give her the opportunity.

“I’m going to guess that you’re here about Iset.”

Rose snapped her eyes to Draco. His expression was still politely neutral, though Rose thought his eyes might’ve narrowed just a smidgen. She drew up a mental image of her speech. She straightened her posture, even though she wanted to fold up into herself.

“I know you aren’t permitted—by your own personal code of ethics nor Union policy—to divulge information found in personnel files. However, Clause 13 states that any Union worker, officer, or director is authorized _and expected_ to share any information pertaining to an at-risk member if the safety of said member is in question. In the event that that person _is_ , their closest relative or associate should be informed of any and all pertinent information held within your organization files.”

Draco waited until she was done.

“Yes, I am well aware. I wrote that clause myself,” he told her. She felt a brief sting of embarrassment, but she wouldn’t let herself give into it. “I have been in contact with Union counselors. I have also kept Iset Goyle’s closest relative updated. I assure you I’m following my own clause perfectly. The second I thought she was ‘at-risk’, I contacted her ‘closest relative or associate’. In this case, her legal guardian.”

Rose’s rehearsed speech was pointless now. She had never expected this outcome. It had never occurred to her that Draco would contact Iset’s past nanny instead of her.  

“But _I’m_ …” she trailed off. She _wasn’t_ her girlfriend anymore, not really. Her eyes stung as she realized she truly had no claim to Iset any longer. “But…”

“I know you two were together. But I’m sure you understand why an ex-girlfriend isn’t privy to confidential information. That’s not what the clause was meant for. If Iset wanted to be found, you’d know where she was.”

“But I’m not just…an ex,” Rose said. Even to her own biased ears, the words sounded weak.

Draco arched a blond eyebrow. “Then what are you? Did you or did you not end the relationship?”

He’d done a great job of keeping accusation out of his tone until that moment. Rose struggled to explain.

“No. Well, yes, but….I gave her an ultimatum. She didn’t make the choice I hoped for.” _She didn’t make the choice I desperately needed her to make, not only for my wellbeing but for hers, as well._

Draco picked up a thin stack of parchment on his desk. He cleared his throat as he tapped the papers against the desk to straighten them.

“It’s certainly none of my business,” he began, his eyes still on the paperwork. “But one should always be careful about giving ultimatums to people without the ability to choose.”

Rose didn’t like his tone and she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. For a moment, she could see the judgement shining in his eyes. And more than anything, Rose didn’t like when people acted like they knew more than she did, or that they were cleverer than she was. He didn’t know. He wasn’t there. He was not part of the relationship. He had no business pretending like he knew or understood the depth of what had occurred between her and Iset.

“You’re right about one thing: it is none of your business,” she said coldly. He slowly lowered the papers back down and looked back at her. Rose pressed on. “She _did_ have the ability to choose. And she chose him over me. She could have walked away from him. Everybody has the ability to make themselves and their wellbeing the priority, and she didn’t, not even when I told her it was destroying me to see _her_ being re-destroyed. She chose to continue seeing him. She chose to let him hurt her. I begged her. On bended knee, multiple times. She didn’t listen.”

“And how exactly is one meant to choose themselves as the priority when nobody ever taught them how? When nobody even introduced that concept to them? I doubt Iset felt like she really had a choice—and I definitely doubt that she considered her own happiness or health as a determining factor in _making_ a choice.”

She felt humiliated. “Well,” she said, and she hated how her voice broke. She struggled to save face. “That’s not on me. I can’t be expected to teach her all the things her parents didn’t.”

Rose didn’t really mean the words the way they came out. They slightly referenced the larger picture of what she was thinking, but she had not articulated it well at all. Draco looked away from her.

“This is precisely why I often think that those raised in privileged family environments are not well-suited for those raised in abusive ones. There are some gaps in understanding that can’t be bridged, no matter how much you love somebody. And certainly not without vast, self-aware, and never-ending effort.”

Rose turned her face away. She could feel that horrible hole in her chest widening.

“Those raised in loving households can’t possibly appreciate the sheer amount of struggling and strength it takes for those raised in abusive ones to do the things that you take for granted every day. It takes so much effort to even the emotional playing field.”

Rose wanted him to stop talking, but she couldn’t seem to tell him to.

“You grew up in a family where your feelings about something mattered, and because of that, you take your feelings into account in every decision you make every day. If you feel tired or ill, you probably stay home from work, because you know you deserve to get better. If you feel stressed out by a situation, you can take a break from it, because you know you deserve peace. If a relationship is causing you extreme pain, you can walk away, because you know your mental health is important. I don’t think you understand the amount of work it would take somebody with Iset’s background to even get to a place where she could realize she deserved to take her own feelings into account. Not when her agency was taken away in such horrific ways for the bulk of her formative years.”

Rose could feel her ears searing. Her vision blurred.

“The problems crop up in many ways and with many different couples. It isn’t just you, Rose. It’s not your fault, it’s just…difficult,” Scorpius’s dad pressed on. He must’ve noticed her tears because his voice turned gentler. “For example, a child who grows up without hearing ‘I love you’ from _anybody_ will have a difficult time mustering the strength to ever say the words. And when he finally does, it’s not unusual for him to find that a person with a loving background doesn’t understand or appreciate the pain and effort it took for him to even speak the phrase. How could they? It’s not their fault. Somebody in a loving family is raised hearing the words ‘I love you’ thrown around like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. How should they be able to understand how momentous it is to say them when you’ve never even heard them before? I’m not saying that you and Iset were doomed from the start. I’m saying that trauma—particularly at such a young age—impacts a person in so many ways, ways that aren’t always obvious, ways that are often chronic. And you can’t expect them to think of the world as you do because their world was very different.”

Rose hadn’t come here for therapy or a lecture. That back of her top was damp with sweat when she finally stood. She hadn’t even realized she’d broken into a nervous sweat until that moment.

“You’re not going to tell me where she is,” Rose summarized, her voice flat.

“No. I’m not. I’m sorry.”

Rose nodded. She couldn’t even see his expression due to the tears in her eyes. Maybe he really was sorry—maybe he wasn’t. But she felt absolutely gutted despite.

“I will, however, walk you to Caden Rowle’s office,” Draco continued. Rose wiped at her eyes. With her vision briefly cleared, she watched Scorpius’s dad stand.

“Why?” Rose demanded.

“Because he’s talked to her as a friend recently and is free to give away whatever information he wants, to whomever he chooses. And I have a feeling he might understand this situation better than I can.”

* * *

 

Her hopes had risen as they walked towards Caden’s office, but once they walked in, Rose realized her hope had been foolish. Caden observed her with a distinctly cold look from the moment she stepped into the office. It made her wonder exactly what Iset had told him.

“Hello, Caden,” Rose finally greeted.

“Hello.”

He did not invite her to sit. Draco did it for him. After a brief gesture towards the chair in front of Caden’s desk, Rose walked over and sank down onto the edge of it. She looked around the office, her posture tense. The same furniture was in here as in Draco’s—an oak desk and bookshelf—though the walls in here were eggshell white. He’d also added a corkboard behind his desk. Tacked to it were two drawings James and Nora’s kids surely did (judging by their adorably inept signatures in the bottom), a photo of him and Lily with a massive dragon (probably Opal), and a half-completed shopping list. While Rose examined her surroundings, Caden examined her. She felt uncomfortable.

“You’re asking about Iset.”

It was not a question, so Rose didn’t answer.

“She wants to find her,” Draco affirmed. “I can’t tell her anything, but you can.”

“I _can_ , yes. Not sure I should.”

Rose resisted the urge to glower at him. She had never really liked him, despite the fact that he’d won most everybody else in their family over. She thought her cousin was an intolerable brat sixty percent of the time and Caden was judgmental and untrustworthy nearly as often. This exchange only cemented that opinion.

She was preparing herself to stand and leave when Caden’s office door swung open. Rose turned around by instinct, her eyes drawn to the sudden movement, only to find herself faced with her cousin. Lily faltered.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. She lowered her arms slightly. She was carrying one of their gran’s picnic hampers. “Rose?”

The very last thing Rose wanted was to be found begging Lily’s boyfriend to help her by Lily herself. She wished she could’ve sunk through the floor.

She was reluctant to speak with her. “Hi, Lily.”

Luckily, by some miracle, Lily had no interest in why Rose was in Caden’s office. She gave Rose a brief smile and then turned her attention to her boyfriend. He was visibly failing at biting back a smile; the effect was a somewhat pained grimace. Lily lifted the hamper up.

“I made you lunch and I’ve got something for you.”

Caden had already stood to greet her when she spoke. He stopped at that. He stared at Lily in surprise.

“ _You_ …made lunch? For me? And brought it here? To me?”

“Yes? I did? Why are we? Talking like this?”

He gave a deliberate scowl. She glared right back. Smiles broke over their faces a few seconds later as he came to stand in front of her. Rose rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. She glanced over towards Draco as he gave an annoyed sigh; they shared a brief, understanding look.

“Thank you,” Caden said next, his voice low and brimming with appreciation. It was probably a bit too inappropriate for the workplace.

“Here you go,” Lily said briskly. “It’s one of your favorites. And I’ve still got something else for you, but have the lunch first.”

Rose heard the hamper creak as Caden presumably opened the lid. Rose inspected her fingernails impatiently. There was a long pause.

“Lily?”

“Yeah?”

“Why have you cut this sandwich into the shape of an arse?”

Rose heard Draco mutter something in exasperation from underneath his breath. When she looked over, he was pointedly tapping his wristwatch. If Caden saw him, he didn’t care, because he was still standing with Lily in the doorway and didn’t appear to be making any efforts to speed his conversation up.

Lily huffed, insulted. “I haven’t made it into an arse! That’s a _heart_!”

Caden didn’t miss a beat. “Well, why’s it look like that? It looks remarkably like an arse. Yours, actually.”

“No, sorry, you’re right. It is an arse. See, I was going to cut out individual letters to make ‘Caden’, but I didn’t have enough sandwich, so I just had to make a massive arse instead. Same difference.”

Rose looked around again. They were gazing at each other intently. Caden reached out, gently touched her shoulder, and turned her around. He looked from her bum to the contents of the hamper, his eyes narrowed slightly in concentration. Rose turned back around and rested her face in her hands wearily.

“No, I’m right. It’s the same. But maybe your arse is shaped like a heart instead of your heart being shaped like an arse.” A pause. “Why did you make a horseshoe out of grapes and put it beneath the arse-sandwich?”

“That is _very clearly_ the letter ‘U’ and you know it!”

“‘Arse U’. I suppose I ‘arse U’, too.”

Rose heard the sound of somebody being smacked. She guessed it was Caden from prior experience.

“It is a _heart_! You’re such a tosser! I spent an hour on this! You were out of bread so I had to go steal a loaf from my dad!”

“So, to summarize: you spent an hour putting together a lunch that says ‘heart U’, instead of just coming here and telling me this in your own words.”

“Fine, you know what, you can eat this arse sandwich _out_ of your fucking ar—”

Lily’s words were muffled into a kiss. A rather loud and explicit sounding one. Rose grimaced. She looked over at Draco; he had actually covered his eyes with his hand and was tapping his foot impatiently.

“Lily,” Draco finally said, his eyes still covered. He sounded exasperated. “We’ve talked about this. That’s quite enough. Snog on your own time.”

“No, we haven’t talked about this! You said I can’t nap in his office; you _never_ said I can’t visit,” Lily argued.

“I certainly did say that. Because when you’re in here ‘visiting’, people who actually _need_ to see our Public Relations head _can’t_. And right now, he’s got a client.”

“He hasn’t got a client! He’s just got Rose! Rose, you don’t mind, do you?” she demanded.

“Actually, yes. I do mind,” Rose said. She sniffed and looked away from Lily. “I’m here to chat with Caden, not listen to you two have verbal foreplay. So give him whatever else you’ve brought and leave or save it for later.”

Lily made a small, angry sound in the back of her throat. Rose thought she’d fight her. But she heaved a long-suffering sigh and pressed on. 

“Fine, then. But I want to give it to him in private. How long will this meeting take? I’ll take the next meeting slot.”

“You need to be a Union member to have an appointment, Lily, you know that,” Draco said. “Give him whatever you brought and please move along.”

Rose furrowed her brow. _She_ wasn’t a Union member and _she_ was having a meeting. But the bigger issue was that Draco didn’t seem to get Lily’s implications about what the ‘gift’ really was. Rose for one did _not_ want her to give it to Caden right then. And she wouldn’t put it past Lily to follow Draco’s suggestion just as a ‘fuck you’. Thankfully, though, she seemed to decide to argue her point instead.

“Oh, that’s bollocks, Draco! Rose isn’t a member! And I think it’s bloody stupid that you’re still angry about that incident with the Ministry board members! That was a _year_ ago! I had no idea they were in here, I just wanted to show him my new tattoo work, I hadn’t seen him in _ages_ …it was a mistake anybody could’ve made! I also think it is extremely hypocritical for you to exclude me when you’re supposed to be all about inclusion and...and…”

Lily did something Rose had never seen before: she stopped mid-argument, as if she were actually considering the words she was about to say _before she said them_. She sucked in an annoyed breath. For a moment, she looked remarkably like her mum, with her short red hair framing her fierce expression. After thinking hard, she leaned over and dropped the hamper to the carpet, reached into the pocket of her jeans, and pulled out a heavy handful of galleons. She walked up to Draco and pushed them into his hands.

“There. My dues. I’m a member now and I’ll take the next meeting slot. Caden, I’ll see you in twenty minutes or whenever Rose leaves—whichever is sooner.”

“And why are you joining the Union?” Draco asked. “You’re not exactly a repressed member of society, Lily _Potter_.”

Lily reached up to swing her hair over her shoulder, only to realize her hair was gone. She gave a tiny huff of annoyance before moving past the inconvenience.

“Of course I am. I’m a ginger. Twenty minutes!”

Caden watched her go, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“Caden,” Draco said sharply.

He turned back around. Beyond a very slight pinkness to his cheeks, he seemed relatively unruffled. “Yes?”

“Continue your meeting. I’m going to go file Lily Potter’s…Union fees. And I guess have her sign some paperwork…Good God…what is happening…”

Murmuring beneath his breath, Draco left the office, Lily’s galleons still cupped in his hand. Rose stood to leave. Caden blocked the doorway.

“Wait a moment,” he said. The coldness that had been in his tone before had significantly warmed. He studied Rose’s eyes. “Why do you want to find Iset?”

He was testing her. Rose was used to revising for and subsequently succeeding on all exams. But she felt too tired to even try. When her perfectionism and critical mind were gone, the only thing that was left was the truth.

“I can’t bear life without her.”

He crossed his arms. She’d expected that emotionally-charged admission to fluster him, but he remained calm and unwavering. “And what about the conflict that made you abandon her in the first place? What happens with that? What’s changed? Why should I give you her details—how do I know you’re not just going to do the same thing to her in a week or two?”

Rose had been driven entirely by heart up until now. Her head– typically so much louder and demanding– had not given much thought to that question. What if Iset was still in contact with Goyle? What if she was broken worse than she’d even been when Rose first met her? What then?

She didn’t drop her eyes from Caden’s. The answer came to her, as if she’d spent years studying the source material. And in a way, she had.

“Because as painful as watching her suffer was, there is nothing more unbearable than knowing she’s out there suffering without me. There’s nothing worse than not knowing where she is or if she’s okay or if she– if she needs me–” Rose’s voice broke. Caden looked away. He swallowed hard. “I only wish I’d known that before. I…I didn’t know how to cope with pain to that degree. I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse than that. I was wrong.”

It took Caden a few moments to reply. Rose thought he looked pretty upset himself; she hoped it was for a personal reason and not because he knew something about Iset that she didn’t.

“I don’t think it’s wrong to think about your own feelings,” Caden told her.

“It was wrong to leave before I understood. I should have tried harder to understand.”

“I think it’s hard to understand things when everything is so emotional,” he admitted.

She knew he was probably putting his Public Relations skills to good use right now, and that was probably why he seemed to be saying precisely what she wanted to hear, but it made her like him just a bit more anyway.

“Please?” she finally asked. “Please, Caden. I just want to see if she’s all right. If she wants me to go, I’ll go, I swear that I will. And I’ll never go back. Just…you must understand. Do you understand?”

Rose couldn’t envision a world where somebody could love Lily as much as she loved Iset, but her inability to imagine it didn’t mean much. That world must’ve been real and it must’ve been the one they were living in, because his eyes softened and he pinned her with a steady gaze. Rose realized she was actually holding her breath.

“Okay,” he answered. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t,” Rose said quickly. Her heart had skipped two beats. Her palms were sweating. “I promise. I swear. I won’t.”

“All right. Do you need me to write it down or can you remember?”

“I can remember,” Rose said at once, expecting an address.

“Okay. Walk out of this building, head north, take the first right, take the first left, and the building is brick with a white sign reading ‘Bast Veterinary Clinic’.”

Rose felt her heart plummet. Her mind was a quick tangle of images: a book on Egyptian gods and goddesses, Iset’s thin, trembling lips the first time they met, right after her cat had died. For a moment, she thought she might hit Caden.

“That’s not funny. That’s sick,” she said, her eyes burning hot.

Caden parted his lips, confused. “What? What are you talking about?”

Rose could feel her hands shaking. “You know what happened with her and her pets growing up. That isn’t a funny joke. If you didn’t want to tell me where she was, you didn’t have to!”

“…Rose, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You asked where she is and I told you.”

He seemed genuine enough, but Rose wasn’t convinced.

“You’re to tell me that she’s been a short walk away this entire time?! In a Muggle veterinary clinic that happens to bear the name of an Egyptian goddess just like she does? And that goddess happens to be the goddess of cats?”

“Yeah. Because she opened the clinic and chose the name. She’s been using that as a surname.” And then, as if to help pad her embarrassment: “I’m not clever enough to be able to make that sort of reference. My jokes aren’t that sophisticated. I prefer more swearing.”

Rose could feel something bubbling up within her. She thought it was rage. She was wrong. Caden looked alarmed as she gave a sudden sob, her hand rising to cover her mouth.   
  
“Oh…” he said. He shuffled forward while Rose cried into her hand. Her head was aching. “Erm…”

“She’s been here, in London, within walking distance?! This entire time?! I-I might’ve passed her dozens of times, I’m sure I’ve passed by that clinic! All this time and nobody told me!” Her inhalation was slightly ragged. She wiped at her eyes. “What is she doing with a Muggle vet clinic?! She’s not– she hasn’t had time to go to Muggle university, I do know that!”

“No…she’s…well, technically I’m sure it’s illegal, probably on both the Muggle end and ours.”

It didn’t take Rose long to catch on. “She’s using magic on Muggle pets?”

“With great success, as you can imagine.”

“But that’s…the Statute of Secrecy…”

“What– are you going to tell your mum?” Caden snapped.

“No. No, of course not,” Rose said. She swallowed the hope that was climbing up her throat. “If she’s working, she must be…well, she must be all right. Right?”

Caden didn’t reply. As the silence stretched on, Rose grew wearier and wearier.

“I wouldn’t call keeping your head above the water in a sinking ship being ‘all right’,” he admitted.

Rose let her eyes fall shut. North, a right, left. Go north, take a right, take a left. She turned to Caden.

“Thank you,” she said.

* * *

 

Jogging in a wool coat, a thick jumper, and a skirt would’ve ordinarily been difficult, but Rose couldn’t feel much of anything. It seemed to her that her feet were gliding over the pavement as she hurried from the WWEU, her mind held afloat by a rapid revival of memories. But for once, they were good ones. The nervous trembling of her own hands the first time she set them on Iset’s hips during a kiss. The warmth of Iset’s breath against her neck the first time they dozed off together. Early Sunday mornings in their bed, rain pattering against the cottage windows, Iset’s soft cheek against her chest. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but that. Iset’s fingers wound up in Rose’s hair. Her catches of breath, her consumed trembles. Friday nights in jumpers and knee-socks, finally home for the weekend, finally together and free.

As the clinic came into view, Rose was once against astounded by the realization that Iset had never been far. Had Rose invented this distance, too?

She took the steps leading up to the sunflower-yellow door three at a time. She turned the bronze door knob; the wooden door gave an ancient creak as it opened. She stopped dead in the reception area, her eyes taking stock of the mismatched armchairs in the waiting area, the cat posts set around, the table with complimentary tea and coffee and—

Rose jumped as something landed hard on her head. She felt sharp, familiar stings a moment later. Her heart jumped up to her throat. The receptionist seemed to have noticed the commotion; she jumped up as Rose reached up for Fitzroy, who was currently kneading Rose’s scalp. 

“Oh, don’t touch that cat! He’s mean! I’m sorry! He usually doesn’t do that, he usually hides from the visitors—…” she trailed off as Rose pulled Fitzroy down into her arms. He nuzzled his fluffy, white face into her hand, a contented, rumbling purr filling the room. The receptionist was openly gaping.

“It’s okay,” Rose reassured her. “He’s my cat.”

“He’s…but…”

“I’m looking for Iset.”

The woman stared blankly.

“Er…Dr. Bast?” Rose tried. Speaking like that—as if Iset was a stranger—made her stomach churn.

“Oh! Yes! Well, I’m sorry to say that she’s taken ill and has left early for the day. Is it an emergency? We work alongside the clinic three streets down; they can see you if it’s pressing, or I can schedule you an appointment?”

Rose’s heart was thudding hard again. She didn’t know what to say, but she knew she couldn’t leave here without seeing Iset.

“Oh, yeah,” Rose said. “Sure. I’ve got a…dog.”

She made up details for her fake dog, had an appointment scheduled, and then said:

“I’m actually going to be…traveling soon. For work. Do you board?”

She knew very well that they did; she’d heard the far off sound of a few dogs barking not long after she entered.

“Yes, we do. Would you like to make an appointment for that as well?”

“Oh.” Her hands were shaking. She stuck them into her pocket. “Could I have a look around? To make sure it’s right for my…dog. She’s very…tiny. And frightened of the color blue. And wire cages.”

The woman glanced around the empty room once.

“Yes, I suppose so, though if somebody enters we might have to cut it short; we’re a bit short-staffed today.”

Rose nodded. “Great. Thanks so much.”

And with that, she walked straight through the sunny orange door separating her from the rest of the clinic. She was counting on one of two things: either Iset was living above the clinic or Iset had an office with _something_ that had an address on it. She wasn’t sure how she’d get into the office without the receptionist knowing, but she would just have to figure it out.

“Here’s one of our exam rooms,” the receptionist said. She opened another yellow door, leading into a small yet immaculately clean room. She paused for Rose to look around and then ushered her towards another door, this one a deep pink. “Here is a procedure room…”

She showed Rose the toilets, a bit of the back ‘surgical’ area (though she knew that there was no real surgery going on, not the Muggle kind, anyway), and then lead her down a set of spiral stairs. The sound of dogs and cats got louder. They stopped at the mouth of the stairs. Rose pretended to take everything in as she stared at the cozy, clean room, full of areas divided by brick half-walls to keep the pets separated.

“As you can see, there are no wire cages, and we’ve got tiny accommodations, too,” the receptionist said.

“Great,” Rose said. She chewed nervously on her bottom lip. “What about at night? Is somebody here at night? I’m worried about what might happen if my dog got sick in the middle of the night.”

The receptionist smiled unexpectedly.

“Oh, then this is the perfect place for you. Our vet lives right above the clinic. She checks on them every four hours—says she has insomnia, poor thing—and you’ll be glad to know that we’ve _never_ had any injuries or incidents while pets are in our care.”

Rose seized the receptionist in an unplanned hug. She was bursting with relieved joy.

“Thank you! Thank you _so much_ ,” she said. “This is perfect. Thanks.”

The receptionist looked a bit alarmed as Rose lowered her arms.

“…Shall I put you down for lodging?”

“Sure, yes, great,” Rose said. She was getting impatient. “Could I use your loo? And then we can schedule afterwards.”

“Of course. You know where it is, I think?” the receptionist winked. Rose nodded and smiled back. It took extreme effort to walk calmly after the receptionist. She ducked into the toilets, counted to twenty, and once she heard a door shut, she quietly stepped back out into the corridor. She held her breath and minded every step. There was only one door that hadn’t been pointed out to her. An old wooden one tucked just behind the sunny orange door that led back out into the reception area. Rose withdrew her wand. She pointed it at the door, whispered her incantation, and carefully turned the knob. She kept it turned all the way to the right as she stepped into the darkness. She slowly closed the door behind herself. Once it was shut all the way, she let the doorknob go, locking it back into place.

“ _Lumos_ ,” she hissed.

A narrow stairwell greeted her. Precarious wooden stairs led up to another old, wooden door. As Rose climbed, the stairs gave loud and ominous creaks. She hoped the receptionist couldn’t hear them, or that even if she could, she’d assume the noises were from Iset. Rose was reduced to breathing through her mouth as she reached the top, so excited and frightened and relieved that inhaling fully had become difficult. She rubbed her damp palm on her skirt. She squeezed her fingers around her wand a moment later. One knock was all that stood between her and Iset. After all those months, she would finally see her again. And maybe things wouldn’t go the way she wanted—maybe Iset hated her now. But at least she would get to see her again.

With a rampant, racing heart, Rose rapped her knuckles against the door. She had never felt so nervous. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. She turned in place. She nervously shook her hands out. By the time a good three minutes passed, her nervousness turned into genuine anxiety. She knocked harder.

“Iset?” she tried. She felt a rush course through her to feel Iset’s name on her tongue again. “Iset?  Please come to the door.”

She waited. And waited. And waited. Her anxiety was mounting. What was it the receptionist had said? That she’d gotten ill? What if she was extremely unwell and needed help and that was why she wasn’t answering? What if she was hurt? Would entering be morally sanctioned under those terms—could Rose force her way in without it being a violation?

“Iset,” she called one more time. She couldn’t afford to be _too_ loud, for fear of the receptionist hearing. “Iset, I’m going to come inside. Say something if you don’t want me to. If you…if you don’t want to see me—” Rose felt her throat narrow— “that’s okay, just…tell me.”  Suddenly, being sent away didn’t seem that scary. Not in the face of the possible alternative meaning behind Iset’s silence.

And still, the silence remained. She was earnestly panicking now. She directed her wand at the door, performed an Unlocking Charm, and eased the door open. A draft of cold air hit her, no doubt a result of living in such an old, drafty building. Rose lit her wand up again and stepped into the flat. She shut the door carefully behind her. It was quiet and dark. Rose swept her wand over the small entrance hall. There was no furniture. No decorations. One pair of shoes rested on the unfinished wooden floorboards. A sheet of Muggle computer paper was taped to the wall. Rose approached it and shined her wand light on it. In the left column, in Iset’s handwriting, there were dozens of dates. Beside that, there was a spot for the time. Beside that, small tick marks. It took Rose a minute or so to make sense of it. She realized, though, after some examination, that Iset was ticking off every two hours on these particular days. Rose only had to ask herself _what_ Iset was trying to keep track before it made sense. Herself. She was trying to keep track of herself. If she was being controlled by somebody else, that person wouldn’t know to walk over to the wall and make a tick mark. Which meant…these two-day spans followed an Azkaban meeting. Rose scanned her eyes to the bottom of the paper. Iset hadn’t done any tick marks in two months. She hadn’t been to Azkaban in two months. Rose felt her heart lighten. Had she stopped going?

Or had something horrible happened?

The floorboards moaned as Rose walked over them. She peeked into a shabby, dim kitchen, but beyond one pot, a plate, a cup, a mug, and a bowl in the open, doorless cupboards, a kettle on the hob, and a box of cereal, it was completely empty. There wasn’t even one chair.

By the time Rose stepped into the sitting room, her eyes were burning. Nothing on the walls. No sofa. Grey, grey, grey. Why was she living like this? There weren’t even curtains on the windows; she’d thrown an old bedsheet over a wooden curtain rod to block out the outside world. The insulation was so poor inside the flat that Rose could feel waves of coldness seeping in and radiating from the windows, even though she was a couple feet from it.

“ _Nox_ ,” she whispered. Her wand went out. She walked over to the first of the two closed doors in the living area. She pushed the first open. It was a tiny bathroom. Rose noted the burst of warm, moist air that washed over her first and foremost. And then her heart plummeted.

 _No_ , she thought. She felt a wave of vertigo wash over her. For a horrible, sickening moment, she looked at Iset, at her closed eyelids, at her cheek resting against the edge of the bathtub, and thought she was dead. But her eyes caught movement at Iset’s chest. Rose sagged against the doorframe, shaking and breathless, her hand pressed over her own heart as she watched Iset’s bare chest rise and fall. _Not dead. Not dead. Not dead_. _Sleeping_. Rose had to repeat it on a loop before she could get her feet to unstick from the floor, but even then her entire body was quivering.

She knew she should’ve left the bathroom. She should’ve gone out and sat on the living room floor and waited for Iset to wake. She didn’t want to frighten her. And Rose knew it probably wasn’t okay for her to see Iset naked anymore—they were no longer together; this would probably be an extreme violation of privacy. She should’ve left. But the thought of walking away now, when she was only a few _steps_ from Iset, made her feel sick. She stood there—still shaking from that brief moment of fear—and debated what to do. As she did, she spotted something she hadn’t seen before—a tiny potion bottle sitting on the closed toilet seat. She inched forward. She leaned over and picked it up. She held it just below her nose and inhaled; the minty scent of a Fever Drought filled her senses. She shifted her gaze to Iset. Concern overrode everything else.

The dingy, chipped tiles beneath the claw foot tub were puddled with water. When Rose kneeled beside the tub, she felt the water seep through the fabric of her tights. She could hear her own heart beating now. She was close enough to smell Iset’s hair. With a trembling hand, she reached up and gently touched Iset’s forehead. She relaxed when she felt the cool temperature. The Fever Drought must’ve worked. She had probably added valerian to it to help her get to sleep. Rose lowered down from her kneeling position to sit on her legs. She studied Iset’s face, evened and calmed in sleep. She longed to run her thumb over her cheek, to kiss the corner of her slightly-parted lips, to brush her damp hair back from her forehead. Rose was deliberately keeping her eyes only on Iset’s face, but she could already tell just from her facial structure that she’d lost weight during their time apart. The soft fullness to her cheeks had lessened noticeably; her cheekbones seemed worryingly sharp. Considering the state of her kitchen, it wasn’t surprising. That lack of surprise did not lessen the sting of pain.

The left side of Iset’s cheek was growing red from being pressed against the edge of the bathtub. Rose was sure the water was growing cold. And she didn’t want to leave her alone and asleep in water, especially not when ill. But she was dragging out the inevitable moment when she’d have to wake her, because she had no idea what to say to Iset. She had no idea what Iset might say back. And uncertainty had never been a friend.

She lowered her forehead to the edge of the tub—just above where Iset’s head was resting—and gave herself five minutes to think and process. The familiar, clean smell of Iset’s hair kept her from focusing too sharply; she wanted nothing more than to touch her. After her allotted time was up, she lifted her head. She breathed deeply against her frantic heart. Her hand was shaking again as she reached forward and gently touched Iset’s forehead. She brushed back damp tendrils of dark hair. She had thought that would satiate her, but it only made her long to touch her more. She wanted to pull her into her arms and cradle her close. The longing and pain in her chest felt like an impossible chasm. She had lived with it for months and months, but suddenly, she was certain she couldn’t bear it for a moment more.

“Iset,” she whispered. She shifted back up into a kneeling position. She touched Iset’s shoulder. “Iset. Wake up.”

She had anticipated that Iset would gasp or jump when she woke. But when she slowly came to, it was less noticeable. Her dark eyelashes moved as her eyes shifted beneath her closed eyelids. Rose watched as her eyes fluttered open. She stared at the floor without moving for a tense second, and then she sensed Rose’s presence. She flinched hard enough to send water sloshing over the edge of the tub. When their eyes met, Rose found herself utterly speechless. She saw recognition flood Iset’s eyes as she realized it was Rose. Rose finally found a few sparse words.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said.

Rose heard the water splash quietly as Iset withdrew one of her pruned hands. She pressed her wet hand to her own forehead, her movements as trembling as Rose’s were. She seemed terribly confused. Rose realized she probably thought she was hallucinating.

“You don’t have a fever anymore,” she told her softly. She felt explanations were in order. “Caden told me about the clinic. I figured out you were living up here. I’m sorry; I wasn’t trying to upset you by forcing my way in. I was worried. Your receptionist said you were ill.”

Iset’s eyes left Rose’s. She watched Iset sweep her gaze over Rose’s face. Her lips parted again; Rose had to take a deep breath and look away to keep herself from succumbing to the urge to kiss them. She was staring at her soaked tights when she felt Iset touch her hair. She glanced up from beneath her eyelashes. Iset still had that dazed, uncertain look on her face as she pulled Rose’s hair through her fingers. Rose’s body gave an involuntary shudder at Iset’s touch, one that she couldn’t have suppressed even if she wanted to. Rose had planned about a million different versions of her apology, but right then, she couldn’t remember a word from any of them.

When Iset finally spoke, her voice was unusually reedy. Tears had thinned it out considerably. “You’re here,” she said.

It was not a question. It was a trembling statement. Rose’s eyes stung fiercely. The pain in her chest surged. She was on the brink of tears as Iset reached out towards her, and before Rose could even meet her touch, she stood. She stepped over the edge of the tub, her movements frantic and quivering, and Rose struggled to stand, too, but was having a difficult time getting purchase on the wet tile. It didn’t matter. Iset fell down onto her lap a second later, her damp face pressing against Rose’s neck. Rose closed her arms around her wet body immediately. She shifted her closer, her face pressing hard into Iset’s damp hair. She gripped her to the point of pain, her chest burning, and burning, and burning. That burning spread to her eyes. She felt such relief pierce her as those first few tears slipped past her eyelids. She exhaled shakily against Iset’s hair.

“I would die to take it back,” she croaked.

Iset’s body shook against Rose’s as she wept. With every passing second, the outpour of emotion got more and more intense, until Rose could actually feel the muscles in Iset’s back straining from the force of her sobs. It pulled out the last pin from Rose’s composure; her grief fell down over both of them.

“I hurt you,” Iset gasped. “I never wanted to hurt you. I keep—it doesn’t matter what I do—it doesn’t matter what I feel or what I want—because I always end up doing that—hurting the things that I love.”

Her sobs made her words disjointed, but Rose had never heard anything more clearly. Within Iset’s words, she heard what mattered most: that Iset felt she was the one to blame. And that was Rose’s fault; Rose had pushed her back to that point. She had left her in the fear that she’d have to watch her relapse back to her most depressed state, but by leaving her, she had ensured that it would happen.

So they would start over. What else was there to do when faced with the destruction of something precious? They would start again, from the ground up, and Rose would never again act out of pain without first making an effort to understand.

And Rose could’ve dissolved into a rehearsed speech about all the places she’d gone wrong, all the words she wished she hadn’t said, all the pain she’d been in throughout Iset’s absence. But right then, there was only one thing that mattered in the world.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. Like this, now. It doesn’t matter. The love doesn’t change with the pain.”

* * *

 

They were puffy-eyed and shivering when they finally stood from the bathroom floor. Iset’s hair had completely dried. Rose had never felt so exhausted; she had cried until she literally couldn’t cry anymore, and for once, the hole inside her chest felt tentatively filled.

She walked with Iset to a small, depressing room that was meant to be a bedroom. There was no bed. In the place of one, there was a feather-filled mattress pad and a thin blanket on the floor. There was no pillow. In front of the drafty window, a clothes rack held five outfits, probably the only five outfits Iset had with her. Rose couldn’t get herself to fully enter the room. The hopelessness of the setting made her feel another wave of pain. She watched Iset cross over to the clothes rack. Her hand was still tremoring as she reached up and pulled down two jumpers and two skirts. Rose looked down at her wet clothes, having forgotten about them until that moment. The bathwater had dried on Iset’s skin, but it had soaked through Rose’s clothing. She took the offered clothes as Iset walked back over to her. Their hands brushed as she did. She felt her heart lurch. She wanted to pull Iset to her, unwrap her from her towel, press her down onto that sorry excuse for a bed, and make her feel some good again. But what she wanted and what she was capable of were two very different things; she could hardly hold Iset’s gaze without feeling the sting of tears. She was certain the joy of truly touching her again would send her careening towards another emotional collapse. And she still didn’t know where Iset’s head was at.

They dressed in tired silence. Once Rose was in dry clothes, she reached out for Iset’s hand. Iset gripped hers back tightly.

“Iset,” Rose began, her voice breaking. “Please, can we go home? We can talk in the morning. You don’t have to stay longer than a night if you don’t want to. But I can’t bear the thought of you sleeping here. Please, please. Come home with me.”

Iset’s eyes shimmered behind a thick layer of tears. Rose reached up and cradled her cheek in her hand. Her thumb swept over her cheekbone. When Iset gave a small, teary smile, Rose leaned in and kissed her delicate lips. Iset’s tears had capsized when she pulled back.

“I’m afraid to say yes,” she admitted. She sniffed. A humorless, shaking laugh followed. “And I’m afraid to say no.”

Rose suddenly remembered Draco’s words from earlier that day: _“I doubt Iset felt like she really had a choice—and I definitely doubt that she considered her own happiness or health as a determining factor in making a choice.”_

Rose lowered her hand. She rested it over Iset’s heart. The softness of her jumper tickled her palm.

“What feels best to you here? Imagine both options. And the only thing I expect from you is that you’ll decide based on _this_.”

“I want to go home,” she said at once, her voice trembling with longing. “But I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

Rose brushed the tears from her cheeks with the pads of her thumbs. “You coming home would be the opposite of hurtful.”

Iset wrapped her arms around Rose’s waist.

Rose let out a breath she’d been holding for months.

* * *

 

Their cottage was infinitely warmer and lovelier after being in Iset’s muggle flat. The walls seemed brighter than ever, the furniture cozier than it’d been the day they bought it, the carpets plusher beneath Rose’s feet. Iset was as relieved to be home as Rose was; they both just stood for a few moments after stepping into the cottage, their bodies slowly relaxing as the smells and sights of home settled over them. It felt right to be here. Iset looked right here. This was where they belonged.

They didn’t even change into their pajamas. There were no discussions about who would sleep where. Rose fell down onto her side of the bed and Iset curled up on hers. They only lasted apart for a few minutes; soon, Rose felt Iset’s knees brush against hers, and before she knew it, they were in each other’s arms. Divine bliss wouldn’t have even come close to describing it.

Rose ran her fingers through Iset’s hair. She set her forehead against hers. She leaned back as soon as she felt the high temperature.

“I think your fever’s back,” she murmured, concerned.

Iset’s voice was lovely, sleepy, content. “Really? I’ve never felt better.”

Rose knew that she couldn’t kiss a fever away, but she thought she might give it a go for a few more minutes anyway.

* * *

 

They probably wouldn’t have left the bed the next day even if Iset wasn’t ill.

Rose drifted between their warm bed and the kitchen, fetching various potions, soups, and teas for Iset. She had gotten worse overnight; by eight that morning, she was burning with a high fever, and the skin on her shoulders had turned splotchy. Rose got the fever down, but she was worried it’d come back; she was prepared to Floo Scorpius if Iset kept getting worse. For now, though, they were resting.

“He wanted me to smuggle a wand in for him,” Iset said.

Rose had thought she was dozing. She looked down at Iset. Iset was stretched vertically across the bed, her head resting on Rose’s thighs, her nightie twisted around her frame and pulled halfway up her body. Rose sat up and leaned over Iset. She frowned down at her, her hand moving over to stroke her exposed waist.

“Your dad?” Rose guessed. She could hear the trepidation in her own voice. She knew they would eventually have to talk about it, but she’d foolishly hoped it could be put off longer.

“Yes. He wanted to escape. I told him I wouldn’t. He told me that he would escape with or without me, and if I didn’t help him, he would find me and he would destroy my life. But he didn’t realize that, at that point, it was already destroyed. So I told him no. And he said he would kill himself if I didn’t. And I told him to go ahead.”

Rose knew it was probably largely inappropriate, but pride swelled within her. She leaned over and kissed Iset. She waited patiently for more after she’d pulled away.

“I really thought that…” Iset trailed off, her voice thick. “I thought that he wanted to change.”

“I know,” Rose said softly.

“You told me he never would. I didn’t listen.”

“He’s good at manipulating you. That’s not your fault.”

“One of my earliest memories—before my parents started using the Imperius on me—is lying on the floor underneath my bed as my dad yelled, and I can remember wishing—even now—that he could just remake me to be what he wanted me to be. So he would stop yelling, you know? So he would love me.”

Rose felt the corners of her mouth twitch down into a deep frown.

“People don’t really understand…I should despise him with everything I have, and most days, I do. But some days…some days I remember the infrequent bouts of kindness. Well, the counselor says it wasn’t kindness, just a brief absence of abuse, but…it was there, and the times were so few and far between that they always left such an impact on me. He patted my back once when I was upset. He bought me an ice cream when I was nine. Those parts of him must be in there somewhere, right? When he contacted me, he said he wanted to be better. He said he loved me.” She sat up slowly. Rose watched as her nightie slid back down to cover her body. She wished it hadn’t; it felt like just another layer between them, and Rose couldn’t bear for anything to be between them ever again. “I waited my entire life to hear those words. I’m sure a part of me knew they were a lie. But I wanted so _terribly_ to believe them…I can’t explain to you how much I wanted it.”

Rose thought she had a pretty good idea just from the broken look on Iset’s face.

“I’m sure that I knew you were right, but I didn’t want to know. Because he was my dad…and for the first time in my entire life, he was being nice to me, and asking me about my life, and opening up to me. And when he said he would kill himself if I didn’t see him anymore—the first time he said that—I thought about all the hours I spent thinking up ways to kill myself when I was a little girl, and I didn’t want him to feel like that. I miscalculated. I thought…I thought you would eventually see that it was all going to be okay, that he was really going to change…I thought—stupidly—that we could all be happy. But two months ago, after so many weeks of him pretending that this was truly all about me and him creating a better relationship, he asked me about the wand. You should have seen how quickly he changed. The minute I told him no, he stopped pretending. And I…I had fallen for his trick, and I had thought—up until the moment he threatened my life—that things were different. I realize now that they won’t ever be. He won’t ever love me. And if he kills himself, well, at least I outlasted him. It’s more than I expected.”

Rose moved to be by her side, so she was lying across the bed, too; her arms were already aching to hold her. She pulled her against her, so tightly that she could feel the sharpness of her ribs pressing into her own. She wished she could’ve squeezed all the trauma and pain from her with just a hug. She wished desperately that it could be that easy. But Draco Malfoy had been right. To be with her would require “vast, self-aware, and never-ending effort”.

And she was worth it.

“One day, he’ll be dead, and you’ll be here,” Rose said. She pressed a kiss to the hollow of Iset’s throat, hoping she understood what she meant by _here_. She had meant it both literally and figuratively. She would—with luck—be _here_ , in their cozy bed, in their love-filled cottage. And she would be _here_ , with Rose. “You’ll do more than outlast him. You’ll do better than that.”

“I hope it all dies with him.”

Rose understood precisely what she meant. The trauma, the fear, the pain. She felt her heart clench. Her mind flipped through a series of ideas. She pushed them away for now. “I hope it does, too.” Silence swept over them. Rose enjoyed the feeling of Iset’s hands stroking her back. “Iset, what are you going to do now? Once you’re well again.”

Iset leaned back. Her dark eyes—always so deep, always a bit sad—bore into Rose’s.

“Stay here?” she asked Rose.

Rose’s emotion clawed viciously up her throat. Her laugh was watery.

“God, yes,” she said, her heart thudding with excitement. She moved her face down and kissed Iset’s collarbone. “Yes.”

Iset was quiet as Rose kissed from her collarbone to her shoulder, though her fingers had crept into Rose’s thick hair. She seemed deep in thought as Rose gathered her nightie in her hands and drew it up, enough that she could continue kissing down her body unfettered.  

“Rose? I think I want to keep working at the clinic.” Her fingers had loosened in Rose’s hair like she expected Rose to sit up, and she probably would have a few months ago. The notion that Iset was doing something illegal would have bothered her. But she honestly didn’t care. She had Iset back, in their bed, and she was _okay_ , all things considered. She let her lips wander down from Iset’s shoulder, hyperaware of every movement from Iset as she did.

“Does that bother you?” Iset asked, her voice small. “I know…I know it’s breaking the law. But I…it makes me feel like I’m good.”

Rose’s heart had never felt fuller. She didn’t even know if it was love or pain creating the bursting ache, but it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. She kissed over Iset’s thrumming heart, her hands slipping down to rub circles into the skin covering her hips.

“You are good,” she whispered.

“No, I’m not. I took the life of so many creatures. They were scared and I—” her words turned into a breathy laugh as Rose slid down to kiss over her ribs. She didn’t like how they jutted out now—because she fully associated that change with Iset’s depression—but she was glad that she was still just as ticklish. Rose had to force herself to turn her face to the side and stop kissing Iset. She let her cheek rest against those same ticklish ribs.

“It doesn’t bother me. If it makes you happy, it if makes you feel better, I’ll lie through my teeth to my mum, to my cousins, to everybody. You’re not hurting anyone.”

And she knew that was largely the point. Iset had always lived her life desperately searching for ways to avoid hurting people, because she’d been forced to do just that for her entire childhood. If she needed to save the lives of a thousand cats to feel better about being forced to kill one, Rose was willing to cover for her as she did that. If she lost her job, she lost her job. At least she’d still have Iset.

“You’ll break a law?”

“I’d break a thousand laws.”

Iset’s grip was soft on Rose’s face. She only had to exert the slightest pressure to get Rose to move back up to meet her waiting lips. As Rose kissed her, she decided that Gregory Goyle would not be contacting his daughter ever again.

Because if he tried, Rose was certain she would end up breaking more laws than just the Statute of Secrecy.


	6. I. Gifts and Prophecies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius suffers a great loss. Albus tries his hand at being a house-husband. Lily and Caden face off against an unexpected foe. Christmas Eve is much more traumatizing than everybody probably hoped it'd be. Scorpius sees the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friend auroralynne (who has provided so much guidance and inspiration since the first fic of this series!) has posted some amazing art for this series that can be found here!:
> 
> http://auroralynne.tumblr.com/post/156402956982/lulucade-opal-lucky-ones-by-aurora-lynne-time (the inspiration for the photo Rose sees in Caden's office in Ch 5!)
> 
> http://auroralynne.tumblr.com/post/156155989297/bevvie-i-do-by-aurora-lynne-finally-finished
> 
> http://auroralynne.tumblr.com/post/156422483582/lulucade-crazy-stupid-love-by-aurora-lynne
> 
> You should check out her art tag in general, everything she draws is amazing!! 
> 
> Thanks to everybody who commented and left kudos! I'm going to start catching up on replies this week. Thanks for reading!

Scorpius was running late and he was not happy about it.

He fretted over his patients (who would surely be wondering where he was) as he dressed in a rush. He hated being late; hated being yet another thing in their world that was unpredictable. But he and Albus had been out late the night before, and Scorpius had had one too many pints at the Muggle pub, and consequently, he’d woken a half-hour before he was due at work, feeling as if he’d slept for centuries. He pulled a brush through his hair with his left hand as he struggled to yank a sock onto his right foot with his free hand. He hopped on one leg into the bedroom as he did, frantic and rushed. He stopped in place and stared at the bed in disbelief.

“ _Albus_!” he cried. His husband should’ve already been at work. Scorpius had thought he’d heard him bustling about in the kitchen, but the only moving Albus had done since Scorpius rose from the bed had been to roll over and bury his head beneath Scorpius’s pillow. Scorpius walked over and threw himself down onto the silk duvet. He nudged the shape of Albus’s hip. “Albus, wake up.”

Albus mumbled something unintelligible. Scorpius huffed.

“Albus, you’re going to be late! We’re both going to be late!”

He mumbled something else. This time, Scorpius thought he made out something akin to _stuff work_. Scorpius frowned. And he was running later and later still, but he didn’t want to leave on that note. He pulled his legs up onto the bed and slid over to Albus. He curved his body around the duvet-covered shape of his husband’s.

“Are you ill? Or just lazy?” he asked.

“I’m not _lazy_ ,” Albus scoffed. “I just hate work and I don’t want to go.”

“Well, don’t,” Scorpius said simply. “Quit. Be my house-husband.”

Albus heaved a heavy sigh. Scorpius nuzzled his face against Albus’s back and squeezed him in a brief hug.

“I can’t quit. But I don’t think I’m going today. I don’t really feel like it.”

“Okay,” Scorpius said with a frown. He sat up, pried the duvet and pillow up, and set his palm against Albus’s face. He didn’t feel ill. “Are you feeling blue?”

Albus grumbled something underneath his breath. It didn’t sound very positive. Scorpius felt his heart sag. He never wanted Albus to feel blue or upset. It always made him feel like he’d failed somehow (failed at making him happy).

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” Scorpius heard himself offer.

“No, you’ve got Amber, right? She’s getting her procedure this afternoon?” Albus reminded him.

Scorpius felt his heart lighten at the mention of the little girl. She was his favorite patient—a plucky three-year-old with sparkling eyes and an unabashed preference for Scorpius over all other Healers. Albus was right; he’d promised Amber he’d be there for her procedure. She would panic if he wasn’t there.

“Right. I’ll come home for lunch, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll have something made.”

Scorpius grinned. “A hot lunch! And you’re _sure_ you don’t want to stay home every day?”

Albus rolled over onto his back and peered sleepily up at Scorpius. When he smiled, Scorpius felt his heart jump. He took in his husband’s arresting green eyes and slightly cheeky smile. He was smiling, too, as Albus leaned in and kissed his lips.

“Tell Amber that ‘Alligator Bus’ hopes she feels better,” Albus murmured.

Scorpius laughed. “She’s actually been calling you ‘Mr. Husband’ these past few days.”

“I definitely prefer that to ‘Alligator Bus’,” Albus said seriously.

Scorpius knew Albus would almost certainly think himself into a dark mood in his absence. Albus didn’t do it too often, but when he did give into his frustration with work and Floo in ill, he usually spent the rest of the day beating himself up over it. He knew it’d make him even later, but as he stepped into their living room, he decided to resurrect an old game to hopefully keep Albus busy while he was gone. He grabbed a bit of parchment, leaned over the coffee table, and wracked his brains. He needed something obscure but not _too_ obscure; something Albus wouldn’t know off the top of his head but couldn’t mistake for anything else. Scorpius left the parchment sitting unattended as he crossed over into the adjoining lounge. He walked over to the poetry section on the wall-length bookshelf. He grabbed a book on metaphysical poetry, flipped on instinct to the section for Andrew Marvell, and sought out a distinctive line. He read through until something struck a cord in his heart, and then he shut the book and put it back in its precise spot, so Albus wouldn’t know it’d been touched. He returned to the living room. He leaned over the coffee table, and with his love flooding his chest, he scratched out: _‘I would love you ten years before the flood’ – find out where this is from and I’m all yours at lunch. Hint: Albus Potter-Malfoy. Rules: Do not consult the Muggle internets or any Granger-Weasleys. I love you! Take a break and I’ll see you soon xx_

He was still envisioning Albus’s sleepy smile as he stepped beaming into the Floo.

* * *

 

He stumbled out of the Floo and into the break room of the Children’s ward, and before he could even brush the soot from his shoulders, he found a tense colleague in front of him.

“Morning, Lumie,” Scorpius greeted. Her grey-blue eyes appraised him with a peculiar hardness. He smiled sheepishly. “I overslept. I’m sorry. Is Willow very cross with me?”

Lumie’s expression hadn’t shifted. At first, Scorpius thought she was angry, and he was desperately trying to think of something he could’ve done to upset her. Had he missed a memo about taking one of her shifts? Had somebody eaten her lunch in the Healer’s Lounge—did she think it was him? Had he taken the last of the Pepperup batch yesterday?

But after his mind sped through a million transgressions he hadn’t committed, he realized it wasn’t anger on her face. It was apprehension.

“What?” Scorpius asked. His smile had disappeared entirely by now. He felt his stomach bottom out. He pulled nervously on his bright green robes. “What’s wrong?”

Lumie’s face remained shadowed and hard. “I was on my way to contact you.”

The sentence hung awkwardly in the air; it seemed incomplete.

“Why? For what?” Scorpius was forced to press.

Lumie frowned. That slight expression of emotion said enough. Something terrible had happened.

He was right. He wished he wasn’t.

“Amber died this morning,” Lumie said.

For a second, Scorpius felt as if he’d fallen back into the Floo. His head spun. He felt sickness corrode his insides. His fingers slipped from the front of his robes; his hands hung weakly at his sides. A fire kindled behind his eyes.

“How?” he asked.

Lumie took a gentle step forward. Scorpius’s mouth twitched against oncoming tears.

“It was just too much. She went painlessly three hours ago.”

“She was fine last night. When I was leaving, she was playing with her—her duck—” Scorpius voice severed. He reached up and pressed a shaking hand over his mouth. “I shouldn’t have left. I should have stayed on for the night shift. I really thought she was okay, I thought she was getting better!”

“You should feel proud, Scorpius. Your experimental treatment gave her an extra six months. She’s the only child born with MHA to make it past three years.”

Scorpius covered his eyes. That may have been true; Amber was the only child to come down with the incredibly rare heart disorder and make it past infancy. But that didn’t make it feel any better. That didn’t make it hurt less to know that the little girl who’d been weakly giggling the night prior was now dead. Gone forever, like Scorpius’s mum, like his first patient who’d died. Scorpius wished he’d stayed home with Albus.

“Scorpius,” Lumie said, her tone softer. “Willow said you can take as long as you need. She knows that you’re…sensitive. She remembers what happened in the Dark Magic ward, and she doesn’t want you to feel pressured into leaving our ward, too.”

Scorpius didn’t have the heart to remind her that the circumstances surrounding his exit from the Dark Magic ward (where he’d worked initially after leaving Hogwarts) had been extremely personal. One of his first patients had been a young man struck by the same curse that had nearly killed Albus in their fifth year. Scorpius had watched him bleed to death; it had gone on too long and the methods that had saved Albus were useless for the man. Scorpius had suffered a bit of a breakdown. His boss on that ward had demanded that he shake the death off and return to work the next day. Scorpius had tried, but after fighting back nausea for three days straight, he knew he couldn’t step foot in the ward anymore. He transferred over to the Children’s Ward and he’d been so much happier since then…he hadn’t lost anybody. Until now.

He knew he needed to find a way to carry on with his daily responsibilities. He had other patients, and anyway, this was going to be something that happened sometimes. He thought he understood that when he entered this profession, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that he hadn’t understood it well enough.

“No, I’ll stay,” Scorpius said. He lowered his hands back down to his sides. “I have my other patients. I’ll do my shift. I’ve got to get used to it, right?”

“To death? I’m not sure it’s possible to get used to it—not really. We’re instinctively programmed to fear it and flee from it. Yet, here we are…Healers…right in the middle of it…” Lumie trailed off. “Makes you wonder if we went wrong somewhere down the line…or if we went very right.”

Scorpius hid his hands within the sleeves of his robes. “Are you working or is your shift done?”

“I’ve got another two hours. The curtains are drawn around her bed. We’ll walk in together.”

“Thanks,” Scorpius said, relieved.

In a way, everything worked out just as he needed it to. His other patients were so demanding (probably from fear over what happened to Amber) that they kept him both mentally and physically busy. He was in constant motion for hours, hugging tearful kids, holding hands while mediwitches drew blood, telling ill, nap-resistant kids stories until they drifted off, coaxing stubborn toddlers into taking their potion with silly song and dance routines, performing emergency procedures and giving emergency kisses. It wasn’t until he was in the toilets for his first break the entire morning that the reality of Amber’s death hit him. Her chubby cheeks. Her tinkling laugh. Her silly nicknames for everybody—Scorpion (Scorpius), Alligator Bus (Albus), Lumos Light (Lumie). Scorpius would never see her smile again. Never hug her. Never see her grow stronger and braver and better—never see her go on to have a life of her own. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but in many ways, he had failed her. He was a Healer and he couldn’t heal her. He felt like there was a very real gap inside his heart. The ache was persistent.

He was fighting back tears as he exited the toilets. He was bombarded at once by a frazzled mediwizard.

“Mr. Malfoy—sorry, Potter—sorry, Malfoy—Mr…Scorpius,” he gasped. “Susan’s having a fit again.”

Scorpius lifted an eyebrow. “It’s pea soup day…you didn’t try to bring her the pea soup, did you?”

He opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, his eyes wide. Scorpius reached out and patted his shoulder kindly.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I can calm her down.”

“That’s what they said, good, I was worried, she’s red in the face, you see, and…”

The anxious mediwizard ranted nonstop as they walked to the room Susan was in. She was a wispy eight-year-old with spell damage courtesy of a wild younger sibling. Her ability to throw a tantrum was quickly becoming legendary. As Scorpius walked in, she was kicking the hands of a mediwitch attempting to restrain her. Her pea soup was splattered along the walls and the bowl shattered; she’d probably gotten so angry that she ruptured it with accidental magic. Scorpius walked over and perched on the foot of her hospital bed, indifferent to her flailing legs. The spell her sibling had accidentally cast was a rarer mood-stabilizing spell meant only to be used by professionals. Susan’s parents were uncertain how their six-year-old little boy had come to know it—much less why he’d tried it. But ever since the poorly-cast spell, Susan often went into screaming fits over anything she didn’t particularly like (and pea soup was definitely one of those hated things). The damage could be fixed, but it was going to take them some time.

“Susan,” Scorpius greeted, his voice raised to be heard above her shouts. “Would you like to go on a walk with me?”

At once, Susan fell still. She sat up. “With you?”

“Yes. With me.”

“Yes!”

Scorpius held her hand and walked her up and down the corridor as many times as it took to calm her down. They made fifteen laps before her emotions seemed to settle down. She tightened her grip on his hand.

“I don’t like peas,” she reminded him. She sniffed.

“I know,” he promised her. He knew there was no point in giving her a speech about the fallibility of adults; she wasn’t upset because she’d been let down, she was upset because she couldn’t manage her emotions due to illness. A few other Healers didn’t have the patience to understand her. They liked to fight her tantrums with lectures. It only made things worse. “I understand.”

“I don’t like when they leave. Amber left.”

Scorpius felt his chest tighten. He glanced down at the top of Susan’s head. He noticed her hair was matting in the back—she must’ve gone to sleep with it wet. Her parents must not have visited yet today. They had a difficult time handling her outbursts, too.

“I don’t like when they leave, either,” Scorpius told her. He led her back into her room. She climbed up onto the bed. “Let me comb your hair, okay?”

She nodded. Scorpius grabbed a silver brush from her bedside table and sat beside her. He gently picked at her matted hair with the brush, holding her hair right above the mat with his fingers, to keep the brush from pulling at her scalp too much. He was still working on it when another colleague entered.

“Scorpius, your lunch break started a half hour ago. Willow says you need to go eat. Take as long as you need.”

Scorpius felt a brief tangle of longing and worry (longing for his husband, worry that Albus was worrying about him), but he had to finish what he’d started. He didn’t want to be another adult who left Susan just because things were difficult.

“I’ll leave soon. Thanks.”

Scorpius spent five more minutes on Susan’s hair, and when he was finally able to brush through it, he felt disproportionately proud. He could’ve cried. Susan rested her head back on the pillow and yawned. Scorpius gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“I’m going to send somebody in here with a sandwich for you, okay? How’s that?”

She smiled and nodded.

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

“Soon. I’ll see you this afternoon, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

Scorpius checked in on his other patients one last time, tended to a few last minute medical needs and hug requests, and then headed back towards his flat. The reality of the day was really beginning to settle into his bones. He wanted nothing more than to go home and fall into Albus’s arms. He wanted Albus’s smoldering eyes, the weight of his body on his own, a hot kiss to the back of his neck. He wanted so many things that he felt he might burst apart. (Most of all, he wanted everybody to be okay.)

He spotted Albus at the oven when he hurled into the kitchen. Albus turned, gave him a warm, relieved smile, and said:

“Andrew Marvell. A rubbish poet from ages ago. Got it. Ha, ha.”

Scorpius blinked back tears. He was across the kitchen in a second. He reached for Albus and pulled his body against his own; their kiss was intense and churning with emotion. Albus pulled back abruptly at the taste of it.

“What’s wrong with you? What happened?” he demanded, concerned. Scorpius could feel his heart racing. Against his chest, he felt Albus’s begin to pick up in its own irregular tango. He didn’t really want to talk about it yet. He just wanted to feel better. He leaned back enough to fit a hand between their bodies. He pulled at the hem of Albus’s shirt. Albus caught his hand.

“Scorpius. You’re worrying me.”

Scorpius blinked against his blurry vision. Tears trembled at his eyelashes, seconds away from falling down his face.

“Can you ask me after?” he begged. “I feel bad. Empty. I just want you. Okay?”

Albus reached up and held Scorpius’s face. Scorpius leaned into his touch, his every nerve aching for it.

“All right,” Albus agreed. His green eyes studied Scorpius’s. Scorpius could’ve looked into them forever. “Want to go to the bed?”

“Yes,” Scorpius said. He wasn’t feeling like a cheeky kitchen quickie. He wanted their bed, the silk bedding…every comfort he could find. He wanted to lose himself in that all-consuming, perfect way; he wanted to feel electric with love, brimming with life. He wanted Albus and, in that moment, nothing more beyond that.

He could feel Albus’s silent question as they both fell back onto their bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms, their lips on one another’s. Scorpius wanted the emptiness inside of him smothered out by the pressure of Albus’s body; he wanted to hide his face into the silk sheets, to pretend like everything was fine, to forget (even if only for a moment). To communicate that, he pulled his husband over on top of him, his heart pounding hard in his chest as arousal began to crowd out every other thought. And this was something that Albus was very good at—something he was confident in; his ability to make Scorpius feel loved with his touch. Scorpius considered himself lucky for that.

* * *

He was seriously considering staying home for the rest of the day when the far off sound of their Floo roaring to life drew his attention. He was generously unwilling to move or care much; Albus was draped over his chest, his strange heart thudding erratically over Scorpius’s, his soft skin caressing Scorpius’s with every breath. Scorpius was taking comfort in Albus’s warmth. He had told him about Amber. And while nothing could be said or done to make the situation any better, Scorpius no longer felt like something had been dug out from inside his chest. He kept replaying the words Albus had told him (“You made her so happy every day, and that counts for something”) on a loop whenever the missing and regret got heavy again; it helped more than Albus probably knew. He wasn’t always the best at words of comfort (his specialty was physical comfort). But on that day, Scorpius was gifted _both_ , and it helped begin the healing process.

“Please tell me I imagined that,” Albus groaned into Scorpius’s skin. His breath was a warm gust against his chest. It made Scorpius shiver a bit in delight—ridiculous, really, considering they’d only just got done making love. Naughty Scorpius could be a bit insatiable at times, but Albus hardly seemed to mind it.

“Maybe I imagined it too,” Scorpius suggested hopefully.

They both winced when the sound of somebody falling out of the Floo followed shortly after.

“I’M HOME!” Lily called.

“ _Home?”_ Albus scoffed, annoyed. “ _That’s_ a joke.”

“OOH, YOU’VE MADE A VEGGIE LASAGNA!”

Albus shot up. “Shit! My lasagna!”

He scrambled from the bed and bent over to grope along the floor for his clothes. Scorpius was torn between admiring his bum and laughing at Albus’s protectiveness of his lasagna.

“LILY, DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT LASAGNA! I WILL HEX THE HAIR OFF YOUR HEAD IF YOU SO MUCH AS—”

“IT’S A BIT BURNT, AL, DID YOU KNOW THAT? STILL GOOD, THOUGH!”

“LILY!!!” Albus shouted, furious. In his anger, he threw his trousers across the room. Scorpius arched an eyebrow from the bed. He wished he had a camera. “THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO STAY HERE IF YOU—”

The door clicked open without warning.

“For fuck’s _sake_!” Albus cried. He brought his hands over to cover himself right as Scorpius yanked the sheet over his own body. Lily stopped in the doorway, her thin eyebrows rising. She lowered the serving spoon heaped with lasagna from her mouth.

“Oh,” she said. “Were you two having a moment?” She looked between them, a grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Shall I come back in, say…thirty seconds?”

Albus forgot his modesty in his rage. He bent back over, picked up Scorpius’s Healers robe, and angrily threw them at Lily. She was laughing as she stepped back from the doorway, only narrowly avoiding the clothing missile.

“Sorry, sorry, okay?! I didn’t know you two were fucking! I’ll go back to the kitchen! Carry on!” she called, still laughing.

Albus was seething as they listened to her footsteps heading away from their bedroom. Scorpius was a bit lost.

“So now she’s okay with us making love while she’s here? I thought she was really angry about that last time? Didn’t you two almost kill each other over that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Albus snapped. “Difference is—now she’s getting fucked. Everything’s a competition with her and it’s absolutely exhausting—”

Albus broke off abruptly. He spun in place and stared at Scorpius. “Scorpius, were you covered up when she entered?”

Scorpius furrowed his brow. “Er…no, you know I wasn’t…I grabbed the sheet quickly, though…”

“But did she see you naked?”

“…I have no idea? Why? She’s our sister; it’s not that big of a deal, is it?”

“…No. Nope. Not a big deal,” Albus said. Scorpius stared at him, confused. “It’s just…embarrassing.”

“Oh, right,” he relaxed. “Yeah. A bit embarrassing.”

He couldn’t help but think that Albus didn’t _look_ that embarrassed. His ears weren’t red. If anything, he looked annoyed. The mood had definitely been ruined. Scorpius sighed as Albus began redressing.

“You should stay home. Are you going to?” Albus asked. Scorpius didn’t reply for a moment. Albus looked over his shoulder at Scorpius as he did up his shirt buttons.

“I think so, yeah,” Scorpius decided. “Willow did say I could take as long as I need…and all my patients are doing well…I promised Susan I’d be back this afternoon, but you and I could also pop in later…I was also going to read Tony a book while Lumie does his transfusion…oh, I did promise Dottie I’d bring her one of your biscuits…maybe I should go back…I don’t want them to get upset…what do you think I should do? Al?”

Albus had paused halfway into his trousers. He was staring at Scorpius with aching affection. A moment later, he threw himself back onto the bed and pulled Scorpius into his arms. Scorpius was laughing as Albus pressed kisses to his face and his throat. He squeezed playfully at Albus’s bum, his entire chest warming.

“What? What’d I do?” he laughed.

Albus leaned back from him. His cheeks were pink and his eyes were dancing. “I love you so much.”

Scorpius was touched despite his confusion. He felt his entire body relax against Albus’s. He kissed his jaw. “I love _you_.”

“You care about people so much. I wish I was like that. I wish I could be as good as you are.”

The sincerity behind Albus’s words surprised Scorpius. When Scorpius glanced up at his husband, he saw passion shimmering in his eyes, but it wasn’t the type he was used to seeing. This was distinctly emotional and vulnerable. Scorpius wasn’t really sure what to say because he didn’t know where this was coming from. He didn’t think he’d said anything noteworthy.

“When we have a baby one day,” Albus began, his voice deliberate, “if we go about it with one of your Muggle ways you’ve been researching…I want it to be yours.”

Scorpius leaned back completely. He stared at Albus in surprise. He felt his heart skip a few beats; he felt his stomach knot with excruciating excitement. Suddenly, keeping still was difficult; he wanted to roll and dance around. Every day that he went into work he thought more and more about having a baby. He had a five-year countdown on his office calendar, because Albus had said they should wait five years before adopting or otherwise having a baby, but those years had felt longer and longer still the more Scorpius was around children. He desperately wanted to be a dad. He desperately wanted to have a family with Albus, to create a Potter-Malfoy family, a unit all of their own. But Albus didn’t mention it much, and Scorpius wasn’t sure if he felt the same way. Sometimes when he was holding their nieces and nephews, Scorpius thought he might’ve seen longing in his eyes, but he worried he was projecting that onto his husband. They were so close in every way that he often worried he tangled his own consciousness with Albus’s. And even though this admission didn’t mean ‘let’s have a baby right now’, it told Scorpius that—like him—Albus had really been thinking about this lately. And that was a start.

“Really?” he finally said. He could hear his own voice trembling with excitement. “Albus, I’m not fussy about the Malfoy line thing. It doesn’t have to be me. We could adopt; James says there are loads of Squib children on the brink of being abandoned, despite all his social programs and counseling services. James and Nora will probably end up adopting some, knowing them, and Ted and Vic are in the process of doing the same, but this problem with the births…it’ll create loads more children who need homes. I don’t care about passing down Malfoy genes.”

“It’s not about that,” Albus admitted. He propped himself up on his elbow and peered seriously down at Scorpius, his eyes still just as intense (and beautiful). Scorpius leaned into his touch as he reached over to brush his hair back from his face. “I would really like to do that one day…adopt a kid who feels unloved and unaccepted. But Scorpius, I really want to raise your child. _Your_ child. Because you’re so special. You don’t realize how much. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your husband…everybody can see it. Everybody in my family, all your patients, all our friends. I want that to continue on. I want it to be yours. I don’t want to pass down my genes—James is passing down enough Potter genes for the both of us. I want one baby—Scorpius Malfoy’s daughter or son. I want it so much.”

Scorpius couldn’t deny Albus’s sincerity; he was practically leaking it, from his emotive eyes to his lingering touches. Scorpius’s face ached from smiling.

“It wouldn’t just be mine, though. It’d be _ours_. A Potter-Malfoy.”

Albus's face bloomed with a brilliant smile. “A Potter-Malfoy.”

They held each other’s gazes for a heavy moment. Scorpius reached up and cupped the back of Albus’s neck. They’d just brought their mouths back to each other’s when Lily’s voice echoed their way.

“SCORPIUS! ROSE IS AT THE FLOO—SHE’S ASKING FOR YOU! AND THIS LASAGNA IS GETTING COLD!”

Albus groaned into Scorpius’s mouth. “I’m disconnecting our fireplace from the Floo system.”

Scorpius dressed with some reluctance. He glanced over at Albus as Albus buttoned his trousers.

“Why do you think Rose is asking for me?” he wondered. He frowned. “You don’t think she found out about you telling me Ministry secrets, do you? I can’t handle her spiel about ‘lawfulness’ again…”

“If she had, it’d be _me_ she’d be asking for,” Albus pointed out. He paused. “In fact, she’d probably take me to court.” He reached down and intertwined their hands. “C’mon.”

Rose’s disembodied head was waiting in the fireplace, glowing green and carrying a worried expression. It appeared that they had interrupted a somewhat private conversation between Lily and Rose, as both women fell silent when they entered. Albus looked between his sister and his cousin curiously. Lily held his gaze, a smirk cropping up.

“Don’t,” Albus warned her, his tone threatening.

“I win,” she sang.

Scorpius had no idea what she was talking about, but Albus’s hand twitched towards his wand pocket, so it must’ve been something irritating. He decided to let them deal with it; he’d intervene if it got violent. He turned his back to the siblings and walked over to the fireplace. He pulled a chair over and sat in front of it, meeting Rose’s eyes.

“Hi, Rose,” he greeted.

“Hello,” she said.

An awkward silence stretched out between them.

“Er…how can I help?” Scorpius pressed.

Rose seemed reluctant. Scorpius waited a bit impatiently as the whispered argument behind him between the two Potter siblings intensified. He hoped Rose could find her voice before the hexes started flying.

“I have a medical question,” Rose finally said.

Scorpius blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh,” he said. He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Do you want to come to St. Mungo’s?”

“No, I—well. Just a quick question. What would cause a splotchy sort of rash on your shoulders, collarbones, and thighs?”

Scorpius furrowed his brow. His eyes automatically dropped to Rose’s shoulders, but she had on a warm jumper completely covering them.

“Can you show me at the office? It’s hard to say without seeing it. Does it itch or hurt? When did it first crop up? Did it start as a few spots and grow or did it appear uniformly? Have you had any problems with your magic?”

“No problems with magic. Uniformly, I think? And I can’t show you because it’s…er. It’s not me.”

Scorpius shook his head, confused. “It’s not you? Then it…” he trailed off. He felt a knot of annoyance form in his chest. Thighs. It must’ve been her boyfriend from the wedding. He suddenly felt less helpful. “Oh. Oscar. Well, tell him to come by St. Mungo’s later and I’ll see him.”

“His name was not Oscar. And anyway, it’s not him, either,” Rose said.

Scorpius had to remind himself that he was supposed to be a kind and understanding person. He certainly believed—in theory—that Rose had the right to date whomever she liked. She had the right to get on with her life. But there was still a part of him—the part that missed his and Albus’s friend terribly, the part that worried about her and felt angry on her behalf—that absolutely hated the idea of her dating anybody new. He gave himself a few seconds to work through that instinctive feeling, because he knew it wasn’t fair.

“Okay. Whoever it is can come here and see me or we can set up a time. Just let me know, okay?” Scorpius offered. He thought his voice might’ve sounded a bit _too_ friendly, but it was better than yelling at Rose and telling her that it was her fault everything was different now. Scorpius liked his friends at St. Mungo’s—even Lumie, when she wasn’t making eyes at his husband, anyway—but it wasn’t the same. He and Albus had spent so much time with Rose and Iset during their last two Hogwarts years and the years afterwards. Scorpius missed those times terribly. He missed their dinners together and their weekend trips. It wasn’t the same with their new friends. He knew it never would be.

But he couldn’t do anything about it. So he’d have to get used to the idea of Rose ending up with somebody different.

Rose nodded. “I’ll ask and Floo right back. Could you have a fever drought ready for when we arrive? I’m out here.”

Scorpius felt his stomach clench. He sat up straighter. “Fever drought?” he asked sharply. “Wait—is there a fever with the rash?”

His tone alarmed Rose. He saw panic flood her eyes. “Yes…why? Is that bad?!”

Scorpius tried to withhold his panic. All he managed to do was make a strange squeaking noise. “No—yes—no—sort of. Maybe. Possibly. Muggles and Wizardkind have loads of different ailments that can cause rashes, but when you add fevers into the mix it gets a bit…icky, scary, yikes-y….more concerning. How long has the fever gone on? Any other symptoms?”

“Sleepy. She’s been running a fever on and off for the past three days. That I know of, anyway. It’s possible it started well before that…”

“Three days?!” _She?_

“Oh, no,” Rose said, horrified. “That’s bad?”

“She needs to come here right now. Are you with her?” Scorpius asked.

“I—yes, she’s in the other room, but—”

“It’s here or St. Mungo’s, but she needs to be seen. Just come here, I’ll look at the rash on her shoulders, and we can go to St. Mungo’s from here if we need to.”

“Okay,” Rose said, and to Scorpius’s surprise, her voice broke. She hesitated. “She’ll be okay, right?”

Scorpius didn’t know what was more shocking: the fact that Rose had formed strong feelings for some girl she’d only just met, or that she’d kept that girl a secret from her family. His annoyance surged for a moment. He fought it back and smiled reassuringly instead.

“We’ll take care of her,” he said.

Lily and Albus seemed to have worked through their brief argument. Scorpius turned back to face them. They were talking about Christmas gifts and eating Albus’s lasagna. Scorpius’s stomach rumbled, but he needed to quickly grab a vial of fever drought to have on hand.

“Rose has got a new girlfriend and she’s ill and she’s coming over here,” Scorpius informed them. He stepped out into the living room and then entered the lounge. He heard Albus yell after him.

“What?! No! No—we won’t help _new_ girlfriends!”

Scorpius unlocked the glass cabinet that held his healing supplies. He pulled out one of the fever drought vials and locked it back. He headed back into the kitchen.

“Albus. You don’t mean that.”

“I do! I do mean that! I can’t believe you’re going to help _the other woman_!”

“I don’t think this new girlfriend can be classified as that. Rose and Iset ended things ages ago.”

“Well I won’t have it! I won’t betray our friend like that! Rose may be my cousin, but to be painfully honest, I’d still like to hex her for what she did to Iset, and truthfully, she can kiss my—”

The Floo surged to life. Scorpius and Albus glanced instinctively towards it. Rose, and standing at her side…Iset.

Scorpius felt his heart jump.

“Oh, yay! Hi, Iset!” Lily greeted happily. “Lasagna?”

Scorpius and Albus exchanged one wide-eyed look before their shock ruptured. Iset and Rose had only just stepped from the fireplace as Scorpius and Albus hurried forwards. Their arms overlapped as they reached out and pulled Iset into a tight group hug. Scorpius could feel his heart rising with every single second.

“ _ISET_!” Albus cried gleefully. “Where have you _been_?! I looked everywhere for you!”

Scorpius was growing happier and happier the longer he hugged her. The familiar smell of her perfume or shampoo (or whatever it was) made him feel so elated. He realized he’d truly thought he’d never see her again. She seemed a bit overwhelmed by their warm welcome. Her hands gently patted their backs as they continued hugging her. Scorpius was grinning so hard his face ached. He’d completely forgotten the reason that Rose had brought her until he felt the heat radiating from the skin on her neck. He leaned back quickly, concerned. Right. She was ill.

“You _do_ have a fever,” he realized, concerned. He gently kneed Albus’s thigh. Albus leaned back, breaking their hug.

“Fever? Ill? What’s happened?” Albus asked. He had the nerve to shoot an accusatory look at Rose, as if it were somehow her fault.

“Why are you looking at me like that?!” Rose snapped.

Albus crossed his arms. “Did you apologize to her?”

“Albus? Shut up,” Rose said. She spared him a dirty look before wrapping an arm around Iset’s shoulders. She leaned in close to her ear and whispered something, her eyes trained on the profile of Iset’s face. Iset turned to look at her and nodded once. They shared a warm smile, one that seemed to linger on, their eyes dropping from each other’s eyes to their lips. There was no mistaking the tenderness; they _were_ back together, then. Scorpius bounced in place, elated. He turned to look at Albus. He grabbed Albus’s forearms and jumped up and down more freely.

“ _Yes_!” he rejoiced.

“Christmas is saved,” Albus beamed. “Brilliant!”

Rose let her arm fall from Iset’s shoulders. She crossed over to start the kettle. Scorpius jumped to action. He got the fever drought ready while Albus pulled over a chair for Iset. He passed the dropper to Albus once he’d measured out the correct amount and sat in front of Iset. He noticed-- now that he was really looking at her instead of squeezing the life from her-- that she looked very unhealthy. She was underweight and her skin was worryingly pale. And when he reached out to touch her forehead, she flinched by instinct, something she hadn’t done since their seventh year at Hogwarts, since she’d left her abusive family home and flourished. Scorpius felt his heart sting.

“Sorry. I was going to feel your temperature,” he said. He pulled his wand out. “Is that okay?”

She nodded. “Yes, sorry, I just…”

“No, you don’t have to explain,” Scorpius reassured her. He leaned forward and briefly rested his knuckles against the smooth skin of her forehead. He frowned. He gently set the tip of his wand there a moment later. The tip glowed red. “Albus, can you hand me the—thanks.”

Albus had passed the dropper to Scorpius before he’d even had to finish asking. He passed it to Iset. While she took it, he gestured towards her jumper. She nodded. He reached forward and pulled the wide neckline of her jumper to the side, just enough to see the splotches covering her collarbone. He had never seen anything like it.

“Weird…” he murmured, baffled. He looked up and met her eyes. “It doesn’t itch or hurt?”

“No,” she said. “But sometimes it feels cold.”

“Cold? Like you need to put a scarf on or like ice is being pressed to your skin?” he wondered.

“Ice. It’s sort of painful sometimes. Here, I’ve got a vest on underneath.”

Scorpius waited as she tugged her jumper over her head. He was able to see the full extent of the rash once it was off. The splotches weren’t that noticeable—they were only a few shades darker than her skin—but the pattern was strange. Scorpius puzzled over it as the kettle began whistling. As Rose poured water into the teapot, Lily called out to them.

“What makes it feel better? When it hurts?” Lily asked.

Scorpius glanced around at her. She was leaning over the table, watching Iset with rapt attention.

“Heat. Hot water or steam.”

Lily’s lips made an O of surprise.

“What?” Albus demanded.

Lily stood. She walked over and kneeled in front of Iset, her face hovering just over her exposed shoulders. She studied the rash up close.

“This is going to sound mad,” she began. “But I’ve seen this before.”

“It does sound mad. How have you seen it when Scorpius hasn’t? He’s studied both Muggle _and—”_

“I’ve seen it on dragons.”

“ _What_?!” Rose and Albus chorused.

“When dragons get lime pox, they end up losing scales right at the shoulder line _and_ their upper legs. The scales don’t fall off, though. They burn them off. Dragons can’t tell us that something feels painfully cold…they can only try to make themselves more comfortable…and they do that…with fire…” Lily trailed off, her eyes still on the rash. Scorpius’s mind was working double time.

“Where have you been, Iset? Have you been working in a shop that sells poached items? We think it’s spreading on infected dragon scales. Lime pox, that is.”

“No,” she said. “What is lime pox? Am I going to die?”

“I don’t think so,” Scorpius said. “I think loads of people have it. I can’t prove it yet, but I think it’s what's causing all the recent squib births. It’s probably like dragon pox and loads of other illnesses…some people show more symptoms than others. Have you been living healthily?”

Iset grimaced. Scorpius took that as a no.

“If you haven’t been eating properly your immunities are probably low. Sadness can make your immunities worse too, actually.”

“But she hasn’t been in the Wizarding world,” Rose blurted. She crossed over to them and passed Iset a mug of tea. She sat at her side and leaned over, pressing a kiss to her collarbone. If she was worried about catching lime pox, it didn’t show. Though, to be fair, she was probably already doomed to get it by now.

“Really? Well, where have you been?” Scorpius asked.

“Muggle London,” Iset answered. Rose had let her head fall against Iset’s shoulder. Iset looked strangely relaxed as she stroked her fingers through Rose’s hair. If Scorpius knew he had a weird dragon disease, he would’ve been much more concerned. But then again, if he’d just spent months in hell without Albus, he probably wouldn’t care much. Dying at Albus’s side would’ve been better than living alone to age ninety.

“I’m so glad you two are back together,” Albus blurted, his eyes on the couple as Iset kissed Rose’s scalp.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Get a grip, Al.”

Scorpius continued. “You must’ve come into contact with the Wizarding world somehow. Where all did you go, when, and who did you have contact with?”

“I went to Azkaban, but the only people there that I had contact with were my parents, and they certainly aren’t getting anything made out of dragon scales within Azkaban,” she admitted. “And I saw Helen—my guardian-- but she won’t even go into restaurants that serve meat, so I know she hasn’t been touching anything made out of animal skin. And I saw…”

Iset stopped. She looked up at Lily and met her eyes.

“Well, I saw Lily’s boyfriend. And your dad, Scorpius. At the WWEU.” She remembered something. “Caden hugged me.”

“I doubt it’s passed that way,” Lily said quickly. “Person-to-person. Or else everybody would have it. I bet it’s just from skin-to-skin contact with the scales. Caden would _never_ touch anything made from real dragon scales. He would never. He loves Opal. He calls him ‘Big Baby’. And…and he loves— _loved…_ —Opal and Emerald’s babies. And Topaz and Flint! And he would definitely love the other dragons if they let him near them, which they don’t, but that’s just because they’re lady dragons and they aren’t as nice as—stop looking at me like that!”

Lily swallowed hard. She glared at Albus, who refused to back down.

“But if she only touched Caden…and now she has it…” Albus pointed out. Everybody looked at Lily. She looked from each of them, her lips parting.

“No! Don’t look at me like that!” she repeated sharply. Scorpius could sense her panic; a deep look of fear passed behind her eyes. “There must be something she’s forgetting! Caden doesn’t have it!”

For somebody who _insisted_ that she _never_ wanted babies, she certainly seemed upset at the notion that her boyfriend might be magically impotent.

Scorpius looked back at Iset. Rose had pulled her discarded jumper over into her lap and was neatly folding it. Iset was watching her, her gaze soft at first, but her eyes widened a moment later.

“Oh!” she cried. She turned to look at them. “Oh!!” She shifted excitedly, bringing her right leg up beneath her. She leaned forward towards Lily, eager to share what she’d suddenly remembered. “I held a man’s coat for him in the corridor! He had about two dozen things in his arms so I offered to help him…I forgot about the coat because he also handed me a kitten…”

“What was the coat made from?” Lily demanded.

“I don’t know if they were dragon scales. But I remember it was very slick and the scales were _massive_ and much more pointed than snake scales.”

Lily pressed the tips of her two index fingers together, and then the tips of her two thumbs, to make a triangle. “Like this?”

Iset bit her lip. She thought for a moment. She leaned in and gently pressed the pads of Lily’s index fingers closer together, so her fingers created a bit of a curve near the top.

“More like this,” she said. “And they were the color of spring grass!”

Albus gave her an amused look. Iset’s cheeks pinked.

“I remember thinking it was very pretty,” she defended. “Rose has a pair of knickers that are—…it’s a nice shade.”  

Lily slapped her hands down onto her thighs, drawing everybody’s attention from Iset’s blushing cheeks.

“YES! That’s a bloody Welsh Common Green!! I mean…no, not ‘YES’, as I’m very heartbroken and cross that it was murdered for its scales...and that it infected you with lime pox, Iset…but I’m also really glad that Caden isn’t wearing poached dragon scales behind my back.”

Albus leaned in. “And you’re glad that you can have his little magical babies?” he simpered, teasing. Lily didn’t even glance his way as she slung her arm over and socked him in the gut. He groaned and doubled over.

“So what does this mean for Iset?” Rose asked anxiously. “How do we cure lime pox?”

Scorpius glanced at Lily. She frowned back at him.

“I’m…working on that,” Scorpius told her. He gave a tight smile.

“The thing to remember, Iset,” Lily began, “is that you’re probably not going to die.”

“‘Probably’?!” Albus hissed back at her, annoyed. “Way to be reassuring, Lily!”

“I’m not being reassuring, I’m being honest! She's  _probably_  not going to die! If it really is lime pox, and it really is spread by contact with the scales, _loads_ of people have it, and none of them have died!”

“What if it can be spread from person to person?” Albus countered.

“Then everybody has it and there’s no point in panicking. We’ll just have to create a cure and get on with it,” Lily said. “But I doubt everybody has it. I mean, for one, I’m sure Rose has had plenty of contact with those rashes. Right, ladies?”

Lily looked at the couple. Rose seemed to be fighting the urge to make a rude hand gesture or punch her; she sat on both her hands.

“Looks like a yes to me,” Lily continued, unfettered. “And Rose has definitely had an unhealthy lifestyle these past few months…barely eating her food, not sleeping much, working nonstop, running off to foreign countries without telling our Gran, drinking an entire bottle of sauvignon blanc on her birthday and sobbing into Uncle Ron’s jumper—”

“We get it, Lily,” Rose snapped. She was avoiding Iset’s eyes. Scorpius wondered if she’d told Iset how lost she’d been without her. Judging by Iset’s soft, searching eyes, she hadn’t.

“My point is she’d be just as likely to show symptoms and get seriously ill. And she looks fine.”

“Could be a long incubation period,” Scorpius pointed out, worried. He looked to Iset. “Iset, when did you touch the coat?”

She answered at once. “Three days before my fever started.”

Lily inclined her head towards her. “There you go. Rose has been reunited with you for that long. And…” she leaned forward and touched Rose’s forehead. “She feels fine.”

“I notice you’ve very calm and collected about this when it’s _my_ girlfriend who’s infected. Weren’t so rational when you thought it was your boyfriend,” Rose spat. She crossed her arms. “What happens to the dragons that get lime pox?”

Lily pressed her lips together. She glanced at her opal-encrusted wristwatch. “Oh, wow, Caden’s meeting is already over…time to go…boyfriends to tease…bye!”

“That doesn’t seem like a good sign,” Iset whispered to Rose.

“You’re a Healer, Scorpius,” Rose said. Her bossy tone sent up warning flags. “You need to heal her now.”

“Oi! Don’t talk to my husband like that!” Albus said, annoyed. “He can’t be expected to singlehandedly come up with the cure to a new disease!”

Her words made him think about Amber. He wanted to heal everybody all the time. He looked at his friend, his friend that he’d only just gotten back. He cared deeply for her—he didn’t want her to die or suffer. He _wanted_ to heal her. So he decided he would.

“I will,” he said.

“Scorpius!” Albus hissed.

“No, Albus, she’s right…I’m the one who made the connection…now I need to prove it. I can do this. Evvie and Ben are back for the holidays, right? I’ll go see Evvie before they head off to their next destination. Everybody knows she deals with genetics and diseases. I’ll bring a sample of Iset’s blood…if that’s okay with you, Iset?”

She nodded.

“And I’ll bring…a sample of the coat! Iset, do you remember who the man was?!”

Iset’s eyelids fluttered shut as she thought. “He…was tall. Notably tall. He had pale skin and a gold tooth.”

Scorpius nodded. “Tall, pale skin, gold tooth, flashy green coat—I’m sure my dad can tell me who it is. Thanks, Iset!”

Scorpius kissed Albus goodbye, and without sparing any other explanations, he scampered off towards the Floo.

* * *

 

He hadn't expected to see Lily again so soon. He stepped into his dad’s office and stared. Lily was sitting in front of his dad's desk, looking extremely bedraggled. Her leather jacket was mysteriously missing, leaving her in her halter top, surely freezing in the drafty room with her tattooed shoulders on full display. She had a long, fairly deep scratch running down the side of her neck. Her short hair was wild and tangled. What could she have gotten up to in the few minutes they’d been apart?

“Er…hi, Dad,” he greeted. He gestured at Lily. “Has my sister done something?”

“Yes, actually. She’s assaulted somebody,” Draco said curtly.

Scorpius looked at Lily in horror. “Lily! No!”

She set her hands in her lap and fiddled with her opal rings. Her knuckles were bruised and busted, which told Scorpius that this had been an old-fashioned Muggle assault. Scorpius walked over and sank down into the seat beside hers. He pulled his wand out and leaned over. He mended the scratch running down her neck.

“Why?” he asked, gentler this time.

She fiddled more anxiously with her rings. She avoided Scorpius’s eyes. “He tried to sell me something in the main lobby.”

“Who?”

“The man I punched in the face.”

“But…what…” Scorpius’s questioning was interrupted as the door opened. Caden entered with three mugs of tea hovering in front of him, looking nearly as disheveled as Lily. His suit jacket was hanging oddly like a few inside seams had been torn. The right side of his jaw was red and puffy. His hair—normally slicked back nicely—was pushed in every direction. _That_ really got Scorpius’s attention. Lily in a fist fight wasn’t exactly unheard of. But _Caden_ involved in a fight? It would take a lot to get Caden to start swinging fists.

Caden sent the mugs floating over to Draco’s desk, where they landed gently. He crossed over to stand in front of Lily’s chair. He looked down at her, his eyes heavy and churning with concern, his lips pulled down into a frown. She extended her hand— small, bruised, bloodied. He took it wordlessly, pulled her out of the chair, took her place, and then pulled her down into his lap. To Scorpius’s surprise, Lily curled up and pressed her face into his neck, accepting his affection and comfort. His hand swept up and down the flower-adorned skin of her back. She rubbed her nose gently against his neck in what looked very much like a nuzzle. Lily was typically the living embodiment of the polar opposite of affectionate nuzzling, so Scorpius was rightly thrown off guard.

“Seriously, Dad, I was only away from Lily for a few minutes, what _happened_?” Scorpius begged.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” his dad said, his narrowed eyes still on the couple. “Now would be a great time to explain, Caden.”

Lily sat up and turned to Draco. Her damp cheeks shone underneath the light of the candelabra. “It’s not his fault! Don’t get angry with him!”

“Oh, I was never under the delusion that it was his fault,” Draco reassured her coolly. “If something reckless happens and there’s a Potter nearby, my money is on the Potter.”

Scorpius cleared his throat pointedly. He felt a bit annoyed as he lifted his left hand to showcase his wedding ring as a gentle reminder. His dad winced.

“Sorry,” he allowed. Scorpius shrugged; he did have a point. Scorpius loved his family more than life itself…but the Potters were definitely hotheads, at least in comparison to the Malfoys.

“That pile of dragon _shite_ stopped me as I was headed towards the corridor and he grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch and he said—and he pulled out—” she was shaking with anger. “He had things made out of _my dragons'_ scales! _Mine_! Antipodean Opaleyes! He thought I’d want to buy them off him, because my watch, said it looked like ‘my style’—”

She was red in the face and trembling.

“And the scales were very small and some were damaged and I knew—I just knew—the poachers went and they dug up the babies’ bodies and—” she seemed to lose an internal battle. She clenched her fists tightly and made a decision. “I’m going to find him again and I’m going to make him wish he’d never so much as _thought about_ hurting a dragon!” She made to slid from Caden’s lap, to presumably go on a hunt for this poached dragon hide peddler, but Caden locked his arms around her waist and refused to let her go. She squirmed against his grip for a moment, annoyed, but when she looked back at him and met his eyes, her glare softened. She relaxed back against him, though her hands were still curled into fists.

“Opal—you know, the dragon she stole when she was thirteen and then spent all her summers taking care of—his babies were killed,” Scorpius explained to his dad, his voice quiet. He wanted to make sure his dad understood the depth of what’d happened; he didn’t want Lily or Caden judged too harshly.

“I know,” his dad said, to Scorpius’s surprise. “It’s awful. And I know it must have been very hard to have him offer that to you. But the babies are already dead. Attacking him doesn’t change that. If you're angry, organize protests against the poaching; make the public aware and make them boycott the products. And Caden, I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were more level-headed than that.”

Caden was completely unapologetic. He stared evenly at Draco. “He scratched my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend punched a few of his teeth out.”

“And? He still scratched her.”

“She’s proven that she’s capable of taking care of herself. You escalated it needlessly.”

“No, I punched a nasty man in the face, a man who was asking for it, a man who was selling the stolen skin of murdered baby dragons that my girlfriend helped hatch, spent countless hours cuddling, training, and caring for, and nearly died for. Fire me if it upsets you. I’d do it again, and if I see him on this property again, I will. I’m not sorry.”

“I’m not sorry, either,” Lily agreed. Her words were a bit uneven. Her brown eyes were shining with tears as she looked up at Caden. Scorpius felt his throat narrow.

“You two can go off and be ‘not sorry’ together at home, then,” Draco said sternly. “I won’t have assault happening inside this building. It’s the Equality Union, for God’s sake. That man probably had no idea where the dragon scales came from. I expect a written apology from both of you, addressed to the man. Don’t come back until you’ve got it, Caden.”

Caden didn’t respond, but the nasty look he sent Draco’s way said enough. He nudged Lily off his lap, stood, accepted her offered hand, and left the office without another word. Scorpius wasn’t sure how he felt.

“She thought of those dragons as her babies,” he finally said. He tried to keep his reproach out of his voice.

“There were better ways to handle the situation.”

“Yeah, but it’s difficult to think clearly, isn’t it? When you’re grieving?” Scorpius pointed out. He wondered if his dad was thinking about his mum right then, too.

“Be that as it may…you have to take responsibility for your negative actions. Even if there are extenuating circumstances,” his dad argued.

“I guess so,” Scorpius agreed. He pulled nervously at his cloak. He hoped Lily was all right.

“Did you just come by to visit?” his dad asked.

“Oh,” Scorpius said. He remembered what he was doing here. “No. I’m actually looking for somebody…”

He and his dad spent the next half-hour hunting down the man, who ended up being a temp in the main lobby. Scorpius’s dad had to use a lot of persuasive charm to get him to agree to lend out his jacket. Scorpius was careful to keep it from touching his skin; he levitated it over to a plastic bag and sealed it up tightly. His dad was in a deep discussion with the man as Scorpius readied himself to leave; going by what Scorpius was overhearing, Draco was getting information on that dragon hide peddler Lily had punched (who the temp had bought the dragon scale coat from). Scorpius knew his dad wanted the man prosecuted, and he thought he ought to be, too, so he didn’t interrupt. He merely set a brief hand on his dad’s arm in parting. He went to Rose and Iset’s cottage, got a sample of Iset’s blood, and then set off immediately for the new Wood residence. He was starving by the time he stumbled out into their elegant kitchen. He considered taking a piece of fruit from the swan-shaped fruit bowl on the breakfast bar but he knew he’d feel too guilty to actually eat it.

“Evvie? Ben?” he shouted. His voice echoed throughout the massive kitchen, but there were many rooms and floors, so he knew it was foolish to assume they’d hear him. He sighed. He was considering sending his Patronus to them when he heard the distant sound of music. He turned and followed it with some difficulty. He was led to a door off the kitchen, leading out into their spacious garden. He didn’t know where the inherited money came from—Evvie’s Muggle dad’s side of the family or her mum’s—but she was certainly well off; the back garden was lovingly tended to, with rows of white rose bushes lining the fence, a Muggle hot tub set into the patio, and a sleek, high-end shed tucked into the back corner of the garden. In stark contrast to most back gardens, there was no neatly trimmed grass; the patio dropped off into what appeared to be a field of violets, with only a narrow, stone path to walk on to get to the shed. The music was drifting from that shed, so Scorpius braved the stone path, mindful not to trample the flowers. He knocked once on the black double doors, but the violin music drowned it out. He cautiously opened the door and stepped inside. His eyes were drawn to the workbench first. He eyed the half completed brooms hanging in the air, the shelves groaning underneath the weight of hundreds of tools and supplies, and the fine layer of wood shavings coating the marble floor. On the other side of the shed, sitting at the left side of a work table, was Ben, calmly hand-carving a broomstick handle, a content smile on his face. Across from him was Evvie, a violin held to her chest by her chin and a look of deep concentration on her features. The sheet music on the table in front of her told Scorpius she was only just learning. As Scorpius quietly approached them, he realized he’d entered during a somewhat private moment. Both seemed too into their tasks to notice him. Their bare feet were intertwined beneath the table, Ben was shirtless, and Evvie was without lipstick (Scorpius couldn’t think of another time he’d seen her without lipstick). She was dressed as nicely as she always was (this time she was donning a pleated chrome skirt and cotton blouse) but her hair was uncharacteristically disheveled; she’d carelessly tied her hair back from her face with what looked like a bit of copper wiring, probably to keep it out of the way as she studied her sheet music. The overall image was so vastly different from every other image he’d seen of the couple that he felt reluctant to speak up, as if he’d stumbled upon them naked. He was beginning to edge away when Ben looked up suddenly. He grinned broadly.

“Scorpius! Hello, mate!”

Scorpius froze. He forced himself to smile and pretended like he _hadn’t_ been retreating.

“Hello! How was your honeymoon?” he asked.

Ben yanked a chair out for him. Scorpius walked over and sat down in it. He exchanged a smile with Evvie.

“Life-changing,” Ben said. “Can’t wait to return. We’d still be on it if Evvie’s family didn’t _insist_ that we spend Christmas with them.”

“I’m the only child,” Evvie reminded Ben.

“You’re your dad’s little princess is what you are,” Ben countered, amused. Evvie didn’t refute it. She merely turned the page in her violin book. Scorpius was trying to figure out how to lead into what he wanted to ask while she played a few more notes. She glanced up at Ben.

“Better or worse than before?” she asked Ben.

“Better, though you’ve shifted the violin, did you mean to do that? Will that change how the notes sound? Here…”

While Ben leaned over the table and helped straighten the violin beneath his wife’s chin, Scorpius pulled the bagged coat and vial of blood from his briefcase. He took a deep breath.

“Evvie?” he asked.

She looked over at him.

“I know you can’t tell me anything. I’m not asking you to. But I need to give you these two things and I need you to listen. I don’t know if you know…I’m sure you do…but Squib births have increased. Well, more to the point, magical births have decreased.”

Her face remained entirely impassive. Scorpius continued on after another deep breath.

“Lily’s been telling me about a disease the poachers have been using to take down dragons. And I really think there’s a connection.”

Evvie and Ben listened intently as Scorpius outlined everything that he knew. Evvie accepted the bagged coat and vial as soon as Scorpius had finished speaking.

“Iset’s back?” she asked, first and foremost.

Scorpius smiled. “Yeah! She’s back. Doing very well, all things considered.”

Evvie smiled, too. “Is she at Torrington Cottage?”

“She was only a few minutes ago, yeah,” Scorpius affirmed. Evvie stood at once.

“I’m going to go see her,” she said. “Does Nora know she’s back?”

Evvie and Nora—who had taken on the joint role of Iset’s surrogate elder sisters during her fifth year and all throughout Goyle’s traumatizing child abuse case—had always felt protective over Iset. Scorpius had been extremely concerned when Iset shut them out after her breakup with Rose. He was glad that everybody was coming back together again.

“I don’t think so. It seemed like not many people knew yet.”

Evvie nodded. “Well, I’ll run tests on what you’ve given me. I’ve got to pick up something else from the Potter residence that needs to be tested, too. I think you’ve stumbled upon something. I’ll let you know as much as I can tell you soon. And if anybody asks…”

“We never had this conversation,” Scorpius nodded. He paused. “Except...I’ll tell Albus. Sorry. I just will.”

“That’s understandable,” Ben nodded.

Scorpius left feeling very hopeful. Things seemed less bleak when he knew somebody was actively working towards a cure.

* * *

 

The last few days before Christmas passed in a flurry of consumerism and hysterical parents. No parent ever wanted their child to be in hospital, but having your child in hospital over Christmas was even worse. Scorpius understood that, and yet he found himself emotionally worn down by the parents of his patients, who wanted so desperately to have their children home for Christmas that they were often reduced to shouting at Scorpius. He handled it worse and worse every day, so that by the time the twenty-third arrived, he found himself crying in the toilets during his lunch break.

“Go home, Scorpius,” his boss—Willow—said, stern and frustrated. “Take your holiday. Have a break from the madness.”

He was tired of feeling like the bad guy, tired of explaining to senselessly angry parents that he could not, in good conscience, let their children go home for the holidays, so he was all too willing to take her up on that offer. He had completely forgotten about his annual shopping trip until he stepped out of the Floo to find his sister-in-law waiting in his kitchen. Delilah was snuggled to her chest in a carrier—wearing a winter hat with little bear ears—and Nora had sensibly chosen trainers, clearly anticipating just as much walking this year as they did the last.

“I forgot,” Scorpius greeted. He groaned. He collapsed down into the seat beside Nora and let his head fall against her shoulder. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“What?! You love our shopping trips! Ginny will be _heartbroken_ if you don’t come along!”

“I know, I know!” Scorpius said. He smiled tiredly down at Delilah as she reached for him. Nora unfastened the carrier and passed her over to Scorpius. He hugged the baby close and pressed his face into her hair. He inhaled the sweet scent of her scalp. She rested her chubby cheek against his shoulder and babbled contentedly as he patted her tiny back. “Aw, Delilah, your hugs always make me feel better,” he cooed to the baby.

“Did you have a bad day at work?” Nora wondered.

“Horrible. Two sets of parents took out their disappointment about missing out on a normal Christmas on me. Was Albus here when you arrived or is he still at work?”

“That wasn't fair of them. I'm sorry; I hope things get better after the holidays. And I guess Albus is still at work. James is, too. Everybody’s been very busy there this week.”

Scorpius furrowed his brow. “Who’s watching the kids if James is working?”

“Dean and Harry. Oh, to be a fly on the wall…”

Scorpius snorted. “Are Finnigan and Henry blowing things up again? They’re a two man job?”

“No—both Harry and Dean _insisted_ on watching them and both refused to back down. So I set it up where they could watch them together. They’ve got issues they need to sort out; I’ve put Evra on the case.”

Scorpius kissed Delilah’s hair. He smiled. “Evra will have them hugging it out in no time.”

“I hope so. The tension is getting a bit unreal. Ginny and Seamus accused one another of kidnapping yesterday.”

“ _Kidnapping_?!” Scorpius blurted, horrified. “What?! Wait—start over, what’s going on?”

“Okay, so apparently both my parents and James’s feel like they get shorted on time with the grandkids. James and I get home, right, and we think everything is peachy...only to realize during what was supposed to be a calm Sunday dinner that our parents are at each other’s throats. So we’ve been very careful about scheduling babysitting times since then; we measure the time out perfectly, so there’s no reason for a fight. But Evra got a bit too involved with 'tracking' the honey bees in Harry’s garden, and one thing led to another, and Ginny and Harry were a half-hour late to drop the kids off with Seamus, and Seamus Flooed James reporting his own parents for stealing his own kids, and I think my dads are fueling each other’s midlife crises.”

“Wow,” Scorpius said. “That sounds...stressful. I’m sorry.”

Nora shrugged. “Just another week, really. There’s always something. Life is never boring. And you know what’s interesting about today?”

“What?” Scorpius asked (a bit apprehensively).

“Ginny’s invited _Caden_ along.”

Scorpius gaped. It took him a few moments to process that.

“She’s…wait. Ginny invited _Caden_ on our mother-in-law shopping trip?! She’s never done that before! What changed?” He gasped. “Did they get engaged?!”

“No! No. I dunno why she suddenly decided to, but she was at the house last night and mentioned—as she was leaving—that he’d be joining us.”

Every year since Nora and James’s first Christmas a married couple, Nora and Ginny had gone shopping together the day before Christmas Eve to get gifts for Harry, James, and anybody else they still needed gifts for. Scorpius had been added to the tradition when he and Albus got engaged and moved in together, and it was one of his most cherished family events. He wondered if Caden would realize what it meant that he’d been invited. It was an invitation that had made Scorpius’s entire month when he first received it. There was nothing quite as fun as traipsing through eclectic Muggle shops with Ginny and Nora, chatting about each other’s stressful jobs, gossiping about the things their husbands and friends had done, and having countless laughs. It felt so much like _family_ that it warmed Scorpius’s heart for ages. As he replayed memories from last year’s trip, he decided this was really what he needed after his rubbish day, after all.

“I hope he knows how monumental that is,” Scorpius admitted. “That’s a big deal.”

“I agree,” Nora said. “Almost as important as the first jumper from Molly.”

Scorpius smiled. “ _Almost_.”

They fell into an affectionate silence, each reminiscing about what it meant to be a Weasley. When Ginny and Caden finally arrived, Scorpius was in much better spirits. Their group of four left Albus and Scorpius’s flat to catch a cab. As they sped towards the shops, Scorpius hoped that Caden felt loved. Because that’s what it meant to be included.

* * *

 

“I know it seems like a silly gift,” Nora told them, a thick, fluffy blanket held in her arms. “But I already painted the kids’ portraits for him; he’s been requesting it for ages because he wants to hang them in his office. The only other thing he’s ever asked for is a ‘cozy blanket’.”

“It’s not stupid,” Ginny reassured Nora. She patted the blanket with a sentimental smile. For a few moments, she seemed far away. “He actually used to wrap himself up in a blanket a lot like this for naptime when he was little.”

“Aww,” Nora said affectionately. She hugged the blanket tighter.

Scorpius was feeling great about the purchases he’d made so far. He’d finished shopping for his dad, bought the last thing he needed for Henry, and had paid for Albus’s gift: a new Muggle motorbike he’d had his eye on for ages. Everybody was doing well, in fact. Ginny had purchased another one of those rare Pensieve-orbs she and Harry had given Albus for his sixteenth birthday (Harry had apparently made a few comments about wishing he had his own at various times throughout the year; Ginny had spent months tracking down another one). The only person who seemed uncertain was Caden. He had kept up with their bantering remarkably well and had really seemed to be enjoying the trip, but as everybody finished with their purchases, he got quieter and quieter. Scorpius thought he was probably worried about what to buy for Lily.

Scorpius looked over at him as they stepped into a Muggle coffee shop so Nora could get her caffeine fix. Caden had been holding Delilah for the past half hour, and the more he withdrew from the adults, the more he talked to the baby. She was getting a constant stream of commentary about all the shops and every single object Caden passed. She must’ve adored the interaction because she refused to let anybody else take her. Scorpius hung back as Ginny and Nora made their way to the counter. He looked at Caden.

“Are you worried about what to get Lily?” he guessed.

Caden had been bouncing Delilah in his arms, but at that, he fell still. He looked at Scorpius.

“I'm worried about giving Lily something in general. I’ve already got her gift. I’ve had it for ages. I’m just worried it'll scare her off again.”

It was a fair concern.

“Is it an engagement ring?” Scorpius asked hesitantly. “Because…that might scare her off.”

“No, it’s not that. She hasn’t even said ‘I love you’ yet; it’s definitely not an engagement ring.”

Scorpius nodded. “Okay, well, what’s your concern, then? Is it very expensive?”

“Yeah,” Caden admitted. “And I don’t even know if she got me anything this year. I don’t want her to feel suffocated. We usually give each other…” Caden trailed off, searching for a diplomatic phrasing. “Less materialistic gifts.”

Scorpius glanced over towards the counter. “I’ll go ask Ginny if Lily got you anything. If Lily did, you’re probably in the clear.”

He looked uncertain, but he must’ve remembered that his time to decide was trickling away. He nodded. Scorpius crossed over to his mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

“Want a coffee?” Nora offered.

“No, thanks,” Scorpius said. “Makes me very, very, very hyper. Ginny, do you know if Lily went Christmas shopping for Caden this year?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ginny said, her eyes studying the menu. “She’s been working on something for the past week. Won’t tell me what, so I didn’t press; usually, if Lulu won’t tell you, you _really_ don’t want to know—yes, hello, could I have what she ordered?”

While Ginny talked with the person behind the counter, Scorpius marched back over to Caden with a smile.

“Lily’s been working on something for you for a _week_ ,” he said happily.

Caden stared. “Seriously? Not a joke?”

“Not a joke. So I think you’re probably good to give her whatever you bought.”

Caden was much chattier for the rest of their trip.

* * *

 

On Christmas Eve, the Potters, the Lupins, and the Granger-Weasleys all united at the Den. Christmas Day would be spent at the Burrow, with _all_ of the Weasley family, Dean and Seamus, and Scorpius’s dad, but Christmas Eves were always quieter events (or as quiet as a gathering of Potters and Granger-Weasleys could be, anyway).

Dinner was a joyous affair, with only minimal arguing between Lily and Rose, and gifts followed afterwards. Scorpius sat in a sea of gift wrap and smiled as everybody uncovered their gifts. The living room was alive with the little Potters’ and Remus’s excited shrieks and giggles. Best of all was Albus’s body pressing Scorpius’s back against the sofa as he opened up the box containing his new motorbike keys; Scorpius was thoroughly snogged and slightly fondled, but nobody noticed thanks to all the commotion. He was equally enamored with the gift Albus had given him: tickets to a series of muggle medicine lectures held at a muggle university. Scorpius received a handsome limited edition copy of his favorite Healing text from Harry and Ginny, a hamper full of Pepper Imps and drawings from his nieces and nephews, a massive batch of Lily’s eyesight potion to bring back to work (her potion was extremely costly thanks to the complicated brewing requirements; most every potioneer charged a hefty labor fee, so Lily usually spent a good portion of her year brewing massive batches to give to those who needed or wanted it but didn’t want to pay the fees; it was very helpful at St. Mungo’s, where it could also be used to combat some optical toxins and injuries), a new wristwatch (also from Lily; it had minuscule dragons perched on each hand that blew fire every hour), a new yearly diary from Hermione, a set of safe pranks for the kids on his ward from Ron, a brilliant new wand holder from Teddy and Vic, and—possibly best of all—a voucher for a weekend-long couples’ skiing trip from James and Nora. Albus had received the corresponding voucher.

After everybody had unwrapped their gifts—and people had stopped calling ' _thank you!!'_ across the living room at each other every few seconds—things quieted down. Victoire, Hermione, and Teddy retreated to the kitchen to make hot chocolate for the kids and firewhisky-spiked eggnog for the adults. Scorpius curled up against Albus and watched Remus and Evra playing inside her new tent. Across from them, Iset was curled up in Rose’s lap, her head resting on Rose’s shoulder as the two conversed quietly. Scorpius hadn’t heard much from Evvie, but she _had_ informed him that the disease wasn’t communicable between humans, which had been a relief for Iset, who had originally said she wouldn’t attend any Christmas gatherings for fear of infecting the kids. Having been given the clear, and having spent her day surrounded by love from Rose’s family, she seemed to be doing much better. There was a healthy radiance to her skin that had been missing before. Love made everybody shine, but it was most striking on those who had recently spent time dejected. Rose and Iset looked better than they had in ages. Iset had even dressed up for the event; she seemed to glow in a dainty chiffon dress, embroidered in shimmering gold, with endearing cap sleeves that helped mask her unusually frail shoulders. In fact, she and Lily probably won the award for ‘most transformed’; Lily had shown up to the celebration late, hand-in-hand with Caden, positively brimming with confidence and happiness. Since she’d returned from New Zealand, she’d sometimes seemed a bit uncomfortable in her own skin after the loss of her hair, but whatever had happened that morning before she’d arrived had clearly made her feel much better. There was a bounce in her step that had been missing before. She’d donned a form-fitting white dress covered in sequins, with long, translucent sleeves that proudly showcased her tattoos _and_ her burns. The plunging neckline and open back of the dress seemed to make her lack of long hair even more noticeable, but she seemed quite all right with that. She picked at her dinner (far too busy laughing and chatting to eat), sped through the opening of her presents, showed off the necklace Caden had given her (a silver choker holding a magnificent opal), fielded questions about what she’d gotten him, drank half a glass of firewhisky-spiked eggnog, and then disappeared upstairs with Caden for an ‘early night’. It was a tradition for the Potter children to sleep over, and Scorpius and Albus typically did, but Scorpius wasn’t sure if he wanted to tonight. He liked the idea of having Albus alone in their flat much better. And judging by the flush of alcohol to Albus’s cheeks and his wandering hands, Albus was feeling the same way. Scorpius had had to grasp his drunk husband’s hand _three times_  to keep him from slipping it inside Scorpius's trousers as they sat around the living room with all their other family; Albus was far too happy and intoxicated to feel embarrassment, but Scorpius hadn’t consumed  _nearly_ enough to want a handjob in front of his in-laws.

“I’m getting another drink,” Teddy declared. He stood. “Who wants another round? Scorpius? Rose? Hermione?”

“No,” Rose giggled. “No...no, no.” She was already snuggling Iset closely enough to make determining whose limbs were whose slightly difficult at first glance; her face was presently buried into the crook of her girlfriend’s neck as she giggled into her skin. Iset never drank—she never offered many reasons why, but Scorpius thought she probably didn’t like feeling out of control in anyway—but she didn’t seem bothered by her tipsy girlfriend. In fact, she was smiling nearly nonstop herself, her fingers playing gently with the thin silver chain of the rose necklace around Rose’s neck.

“Absolutely not,” Hermione groaned. She was petting Hugo’s hair; he’d curled up against his mum’s side as if he were ten years old, cheerfully holding a conversation with Ginny and Ron about his bakery’s upcoming opening day. Teddy looked expectantly towards Scorpius, who was currently trying to keep Albus from wedging his hand beneath Scorpius’s bum. He clasped Albus’s hands tightly within his own and smiled at Teddy.

“Thanks, but no. Alcohol makes my stomach hurt. And Albus is _officially_ cut off, too.”

Teddy appraised his younger cousin with amusement. “I wasn’t even going to ask him. He’s two drinks off from blacking out.”

Albus leaned over and kissed Scorpius’s throat. Scorpius felt heat rush to his face. He gave Albus a stern look in response, though there was an ever-strengthening part of himself that thought about allowing him to go on with it despite all his reservations.

“Merlin,” Harry commented, amused. “How many drinks did you have, Al? I’ve never seen you this sloshed. Never seen your _mum_ this sloshed, actually—no, wait, never mind. Yes, I have.”

Ginny groaned. “Oh, Merlin, the Harpies signing party.”

Harry looked at the wall, his eyes a million miles away. “The Harpies signing party. Wow.”

“I think Lily spiked him,” Scorpius complained. “She made his last three. He doesn’t usually get this way.”

Harry, Ginny, and James exchanged a horrified look.

“What?” Scorpius asked quickly.

“You let _Lily_ make him an alcoholic drink? She, by nature, quadruples the alcohol content every time. You _never_ accept a drink from her,” Ginny said. She stretched out and threw her legs over Harry’s lap. He set his palm on her calf and rubbed her skin affectionately. He’d had a few drinks himself, clearly. There was no question where Albus got it from. “The child’s liver is probably a wasteland.”

Scorpius _had_ thought that Albus’s drinks smelled much stronger than everybody else's. He winced. “Oh, no... _I_ made Albus accept them…I thought Lily was being kind…the Christmas spirit, and all…”

“He’ll be okay,” Harry said. They all watched as Albus pulled at the hem of Scorpius’s cardigan. Scorpius lightly smacked his hands in response, growing rapidly embarrassed. “Er…maybe you should go put him to bed. He can sleep it off.”

“But come back down!!” Ginny ordered. “We still want to visit with you, okay?”

Scorpius would’ve rather visited with Albus’s covered body parts. He forced a smile on his face. “Yes, I will!”

He hoisted his husband to his feet and struggled to climb the Den stairs while his husband groped his arse. Scorpius deposited him into his childhood bedroom, checked the room for any wayward kids (the Potter kids and Remus had been roaming the house playing for ages), and pushed him down onto his bed. Albus immediately pushed himself back up and reached for Scorpius’s belt. Scorpius debated the morality of sleeping with his extremely drunk husband for a few difficult seconds, but he ultimately decided Albus wasn’t really in any state to decide anything. He pulled Albus’s shoes off, helped him from his trousers, and stretched out on the bed with him. He peered seriously into Albus’s eyes.

“Albus, when you’re sober, we can make love ‘til the New Year. But you’re a bit out of your mind right now.”

Albus furrowed his brow. “No…I’m _fine_ …”

“You kept trying to stick your hands down my trousers in front of your parents.”

“What? Nah…”

Scorpius kissed Albus softly. He pulled back before Albus got any more ideas.

“I’ll be back later, okay? Hopefully you’ll be a bit more…Albus-y.”

Albus leaned over Scorpius and peered down into his eyes, his green ones familiarly smoldering. It took every ounce of self-control for Scorpius to stick to his decision.

“This is who I really am, Scorpius,” Albus told him seriously.

Scorpius was somehow able to withhold his laughter until he made it into the hall. He took a minute to compose himself, peeked into James’s old bedroom where Delilah was sleeping to make sure she was still doing okay, and then he returned back to the living room. James and Ginny called him over to them at once; he felt a bit suspicious as he sat down in the space they’d made for him, right between them. He looked from his mother-in-law to his brother-in-law.

“Hello again,” he greeted.

“Scorpius,” Ginny began. “James and I were chatting and we were wondering something.”

Scorpius swallowed nervously. “Yeah? Er…what?”

James leaned in slightly. “What’s your stance on babies?”

Scorpius felt his cheeks warm. He looked from James to Ginny, his eyes wide. “Oh! Oh. Erm. Okay. Babies. Well, as you know, James, I really love your kids. I love when they’re born. I helped birth Henry myself, and that was probably the coolest thing I ever did. Er…I dunno, I like baby hands and feet, I like their little gurgles, and I love when they start talking, it’s always so exciting—”

“No,” Ginny interrupted gently. “He means…how do you feel about you and Albus having a baby? Has he talked to you about this yet?”

Scorpius pursed his brow. He looked down at his knees. “No…has he talked to _you_ about it?!”

“…So how do you feel on the subject?”

Scorpius wanted to press the issue that Albus had talked to everybody _but him_ about _them_ having babies, but the implications of what they were suggesting took him off guard. He looked up at them.

“I want babies very badly. Has Albus decided he doesn’t?”

“Scorpius,” James began gravely. “Albus has a terminal case of baby fever and has for months. Ever since Delilah was born. He wants a baby and I think the wait is killing his sulky little soul…”

Scorpius felt his heart skip a few consecutive beats, resulting in a weird trembling sensation in his chest. He felt his lips part.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Ginny affirmed. “We hoped he’d talk to you about it, instead of silently suffering, but he’s Albus. You understand.”

“Yeah…” Scorpius said. “I do. I do understand…wow.”

He trailed off, a million thoughts rushing through his mind. He couldn’t dare to hope that what they were saying was true—that Albus had also realized that he didn’t want to wait any longer—but his heart was a bit reckless and didn’t follow instruction. He hoped anyway.

“This is a great time to talk all about it,” James said. He slung an arm over Scorpius’s shoulders. “You know, one of Nora’s muggle aunts had _somebody else_ carry her baby in their belly. Muggles can do all sorts of things that we can’t with babies. So if you and Albus wanted to have a baby, there are definitely ways.”

“I know,” Scorpius said quickly, excitedly. “I’ve been reading all about them and my Muggle friend is a lady-part doctor. They can do so many amazing things. They can create embryos from egg donation and sperm donation and implant them into anybody—even a completely different woman than whose eggs it is! The muggles will outlast us.”

“I was thinking that too, on the cruise…the things they think up…ingenious, really…”

It wasn’t until he, Ginny, James, and Nora were well into a conversation about surrogacy and Muggle fertility procedures that Scorpius wondered, at the back of his mind, whether Ginny, James, and Lily had co-conspired and orchestrated Albus’s extra-strong drinks to get him out of the way for this conversation. If they had, he wasn’t sure he was _that_ outraged; he thought Albus should’ve told him the way he felt ages ago, but then again, Scorpius hadn’t exactly told Albus, either.

“It’s a bit frightening, though,” Nora said uneasily. “The idea of letting a complete _stranger_ carry your baby for nine months…can you imagine?” she directed the question to James. He was already grimacing before she’d even asked, so his opinion was clear. She looked back at Scorpius, concerned. “I mean, there are so many ways you can mess up during pregnancy…how would you know you could trust the woman? What if she decided to drink or do drugs or…or….get in hot tubs for long periods of time…” she shook her head, haunted. A few curls slipped from her bun as she did. James’s touch was gentle and reverent as he leaned over and gently tucked those strands behind her ear. “I can’t imagine how stressful it would be.”

Scorpius felt his heart clench with nervousness. She had a point. Trusting a complete stranger with the growth of his baby? It was a leap of faith unlike any other. Scorpius didn’t think Albus was trusting enough to go along with it. He probably wouldn’t even suggest it to him.

“And the eggs,” James added. “How well do you think the donating mothers are examined? ‘Cos what if you end up with a baby who inherits racism from their secret mother?”

“James,” Hermione called across the room, “you can’t inherit something like that.”

“I don’t know, Aunt Hermione. All the racists I know have racist parents…”

“Nature versus nurture,” Rose backed her mum up. “They’re racists because they were raised by racists and have their heads too far up their arses to learn any better, not because they inherited a racist gene.”

“Actually,” Hugo said, perking up. He looked away from his chess match with Ron. “While I agree there is an interplay between nature and nurture, I did read a study that said discriminatory inclinations _can_ be passed down genetically.”

“See!” James said, panicked. He looked back at Scorpius. “You can’t get a stranger’s eggs.”

“Yeah, what a silly suggestion,” Rose scoffed. “He can just reach into his pocket and get all the eggs he’s just got lying around!” 

“ _You’ve_ got eggs just lying around, Rose,” James shot back. “I don’t hear you offering any up, so keep your unhelpful comments to yourself.”

Ron looked horrified. “She can’t give her eggs away! Hermione and I want to have grandchildren!”

“Hugo and his girlfriend can give you grandchildren,” Rose shot back.

That got _everybody’s_ attention. Harry and Ginny looked up from their quiet conversation, Teddy and Vic turned away from the window, and Hugo turned bright red.

“Rose, that was very…inconsiderate!” he scolded. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“If you don’t have a girlfriend, why is Aster at your flat nearly every single night?” Rose challenged.

Scorpius’s mouth opened in shock. Hermione stood.

“Hugo? Is that true? You’ve got a _girlfriend_?”

Hugo’s cheeks were astoundingly dark. He looked around the room, wide-eyed, embarrassed, and blurted:

“Don’t tell Lily!”

“Why not?” Hermione asked. She stood beside Hugo and patted his blushing cheeks. “She’ll be very happy about it!”

“No…no, she won’t, because it’s been a secret for months. She doesn’t like secrets.”

“Oh…” Hermione trailed off.

“Who cares what Lily thinks?” Harry said firmly. He nodded. “I’m happy for you, Hugo.”

“Yeah. That is a lovely match,” Ginny said.

Hugo smiled, pleased. Rose must’ve felt guilty for shoving all the unwanted attention onto her brother because she addressed James again to take the focus off of him.

“And, James, I can’t give my eggs away because maybe I’ll use them one day.”

Scorpius thought about pointing out that it didn’t work that way—you only gave away a small amount, leaving more than enough to have your own babies—but he hadn’t _ever_ considered taking Rose’s eggs and didn’t want her to feel like he was supporting the decision. A week ago he would’ve thought it’d be a great solution, because Rose shared Albus’s genes, was very clever and kind, and meant a lot to them, but he was not comfortable with it now that Iset had lime pox. What if she never could regain her ability to have magical children? What if they got married and one day wanted to have a magical child? What if something happened during the procedure (as unlikely as it might be) to leave Rose unable to? No, he couldn’t have even the possibility of that on his conscience.

“How’s that going to work?” James asked, his eyes on Rose’s girlfriend, who was sleeping soundly across Rose’s lap.

“I don’t know, James. How would it work to have you mind your own business ever?”

“James, Rose,” Hermione said sternly. “Stop it.”

“I haven’t even talked to Albus about this yet,” Scorpius pointed out feebly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Scorpius is right,” Hermione added. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Quidditch,” Ron, Ginny, and Harry said at once.

Hermione groaned.

* * *

 

Scorpius was waiting for a good moment to leave the conversation about Quidditch and slip up to bed when the sound of little approaching feet provided a welcomed distraction. Scorpius smiled at Evra as she came bounding into the living room, her hair spread out wildly in every direction. She walked over to her dad at once.

“Daddy,” Evra whined. She sat down at his feet—tired from her race throughout the Den—and tugged repeatedly at his jumper hem. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy—”

James looked away from Teddy and towards his daughter. He leaned over and lifted her, bringing her up to sit in his lap. He tried to tame her hair by gently combing through it with his fingers, but it didn’t appear to be going well. Evra reached forward and held her dad’s face in her tiny hands. That got James’s full attention.

“Yes, darling?” he asked Evra.

She squeezed his face tighter. “Daddy, how come Auntie Lulu can wrestle, but me and Remus can’t? Vic told us ‘NO’.”

“Well, because you’re very little, Evra, and you always end up getting hurt because Remus is a bit boisterous…” James trailed off, a look of horror taking over his features. What Evra had said seemed to dawn on all of them at once. Scorpius looked to his left and exchanged a panicked look with Nora. What had Evra seen?! As silence permeated the room completely—for the first time in _hours_ —they all became aware of what sounded like struggling from the room above them (Lily’s childhood bedroom). _Oh no._ Voices drifted through the ceiling a moment later.

“No!” Lily insisted. The heard the sound of springs groaning, followed by a _thump_. “ _I’m_ on top!”

“No you are _not—_ it’s my turn! You had top this morning!” Another groan from the bed, another _thump_. The chandelier shook this time; the lit candles swayed dangerously, making the soft light in the living room tremble. “You’re so greedy!”

“FINE, you whiny baby! But you weren’t complaining this morning!”

More sounds of struggling. The lights continued to flicker as the candles swayed. Scorpius was sinking further and further back into the sofa cushions, horrified. Everybody seemed frozen in shock. When they heard Lily give a gasping whimper, Harry actually slapped his hands over his ears.

“ _C’mon_! You’re so _frustrating_!” Lily complained. _Thump_. One of the candles nearly fell from the chandelier. Two extinguished. “You're taking too long; your turn's been revoked!”

“Nuh uh,” Caden scolded, his voice deep and breathless. The candle actually _did_ pop out this time as he presumably flung her back over. The ceiling above them creaked. “Patience. I want to see how long you can wait before you beg for it—”

“Oh, Merlin,” Harry said, looking remarkably green. He stood abruptly without saying a word. He left the room quickly, headed towards the garden.

“I won’t beg for anything, least of all somebody who probably can’t even handle me— _ahh, fuck_!”

As Lily’s bickering gave way to pleased hums and gasps, the stunned horror of the room fully ruptured. James ran full-speed from the house, his hand pressed over his heart like he’d just witnessed a horrifying moral transgression. Scorpius was considering burying his head inside the cushions. Ron had his hand over his mouth like he might be sick. Hermione was muttering something beneath her breath about ‘boundaries and limitations’ before she too left the room. When Scorpius glanced to the side, he saw Nora had closed her hands over Evra’s ears. The only person who looked even vaguely amused was Rose.

“Well, at least somebody is trying to teach her some patience and self-control,” Rose commented.

Scorpius had thought it was over—the sounds had dimmed—but after a few more moments, it got worse. Scorpius grimaced as a shriek permeated the room.

“YES! _Ah_ …I—LOVE—Y…-- _ah, fuck!_ ”

Ginny jumped to her feet. “Ugh, for Merlin’s _sake,_ Lulu…that is _enough_ ,” she grimaced. She waved her wand; the room fell silent once more. The damage had unfortunately already been done. Ginny sank back down into her seat. Nobody could meet each other’s eyes. Scorpius was suffering from extreme secondhand embarrassment.

“I should…go check on Harry…” Ron finally said uneasily. He stood. He paused in the doorway and glanced at Rose. He gave her a soft smile. “My Rosie angel…I’m so glad I’ll never have to go through anything like this with you…”

He walked off with a fond smile, leaving Rose staring after him in disbelief. Rose looked down at Iset in her lap with a puzzled expression, as if she suddenly wondered if she was the only person in the room who could see her. 

“What does he think Rose and Iset do together?” Teddy hissed to Scorpius and Nora. “Cuddle well into the night and make friendship bracelets ‘til dawn?”

Scorpius and Nora succumbed to poorly restrained laughter. Hugo walked over and joined them on the sofa.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered to Scorpius. “I think she was about to say ‘I love you’. About time…”

“Yeah,” Scorpius said. He was struggling not to laugh again. “If only Caden had…backed off...for a moment…poor bloke; so close and yet so far.”

Hugo snickered. It helped break through Scorpius’s revulsion, and soon, he was laughing with him. He might’ve felt bad for laughing at Lily’s expense, but she _had_ just traumatized them all, so he figured it was probably okay.

Because Ginny had cast the silencing spell, they were deaf to everything happening upstairs. So when Albus came stomping down the stairs, still in only his jumper and his pants, a horrified and vexed expression on his face, they remembered that they’d only fixed the problem for those downstairs. He pointed up the stairs.

“THAT IS THE MOST _DISTURBING_ THING THAT HAS _EVER_ HAPPENED TO ME!” he yelled. “I’m going to _kill them_! Inconsiderate! Inhumane! I should _not_ wake up in my _childhood room_ to the sounds of my _little sister_ getting fucked!”

“Oh, shit, Al,” Ginny said, wincing. “Sorry. I forgot you were up there.” She stood. “I’ll go knock and ask them to keep it down.”

“NO, no! No need! Already done!” Albus snapped. He shuddered. He stamped over and fell down into Scorpius’s lap. He pressed his face into Scorpius’s shoulder and yawned; Scorpius cradled him close. His skin was radiating heat like an oven. He was clearly still exhausted going by his cuddliness. Scorpius wondered if his disregard for his lack of trousers was due to a remaining level of intoxication or exhaustion. He stroked Albus’s back. Seconds later, Lily stepped suddenly into the room, her approach silenced by the charm. She was back in her shining white dress, but the thin, light-colored material gave away a bit too much; she had either love bites or bruises already purpling the skin beneath the fabric covering her shoulders, chest, and hips. She stared at them, her hands pulling through her tangled hair. Scorpius noticed she hadn’t taken off the choker Caden gave her, even though all other jewelry had been foregone. 

“Okay, it’s come to my attention that my silencing charm was inadequate,” she greeted.  

“That’s an understatement, love,” Ginny said.

Lily squinted around the room. Scorpius realized her eyesight potion must've worn off as she reached into a hidden pocket on her dress and withdrew her glasses. She pushed them onto her face and glanced around again. She sagged, relieved.

“Oh, good,” she said. She set a hand over her heart. “Dad wasn’t in here.”

Everybody exchanged a quick look. Lily didn’t miss it.

“Oh, no…he _was_ in here,” she realized.

“He left right after Caden told you to…what was it again? ‘Beg’ for it?” Rose shared. She was getting far too much enjoyment out of this. Albus would’ve been doing the same, had he not been so traumatized and exhausted.

“Shit…fuck,” Lily groaned.

“No!” Albus yelled. Scorpius jumped. Albus turned around and glared at Lily. “You aren’t allowed to say that word around me for six months—or until you pay to have my memory professionally altered!”

Lily was clearly considering snapping back at Albus, but remarkably, she chose not to. Scorpius noted—with some repulsion—that that must’ve been _great_ sex to have her so pliable.

“Sorry…everybody,” she said, after a long pause. Scorpius and Nora exchanged a surprised look at that apology. “I made a mistake. I wasn’t thinking very clearly when I went to cast the charm. Don’t tease him.”

“Oh, we’re not going to tease him,” Rose assured Lily. “Just you.”

“I hope you two are being careful—” Ginny wasn’t given the opportunity to finish.

“Nora gets pregnant accidentally nearly six years ago now and suddenly everybody with a uterus is suspect,” Lily muttered, annoyed. Scorpius guessed this was a lecture her mum gave her a lot. She turned on her heel and set back up the stairs, mumbling as she went: “So much fucking trouble…potions every damn day…I wish somebody could just take my uterus out, honestly. It’s freeloading and I don’t appreciate it. I’m going to put up damn flyers: ‘ovaries, free to a good home, do not wish to stay in contact…’”

Scorpius felt everybody’s eyes on him. He met their gazes with some reluctance.

Rose voiced what everybody was clearly thinking. “I don’t think she’d mind giving up some of her eggs.”

“She’s being dramatic. She’s good at that,” Scorpius said.

“Still,” Rose said thoughtfully. She looked back down at her girlfriend. “It’s a thought. She’s the person most genetically similar to Albus, after all.”

Albus was half asleep in Scorpius’s lap. “What the _hell_ is Rose talking about?” he mumbled.

“Nothing,” Scorpius said quickly, his mind working quickly. “Nothing at all.”

* * *

 

Ginny sent Scorpius out to the garden to check on Harry, as Scorpius was the only sober person who wasn’t chained to the furniture by sleeping kids (as Ginny, James, and Nora were). Scorpius left Albus grumpily drinking coffee and ventured out into the chilly night. He headed towards the garden shed illuminated by candlelight and laughter. When he stepped inside, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were lounging on the furniture, a game of Exploding Snap set up in front of them.

“Hello, Scorpius,” Ron greeted.

“Hi,” he said. He stepped into the warm shed. “Harry, Ginny sent me to ask you if you’re ever coming to bed.”

Harry shook his head. “Nope. Tell her I’m sleeping in the shed and she’s welcome to join me.”

Scorpius furrowed his brow. “The…the shed?”

“The shed. Right here. Until the house is empty again,” he insisted.

 _Oh_. “Harry, Lily went to sleep ages ago—”

“ _The shed_. Until the house is empty,” he repeated.

 “Harry,” Hermione said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic?”

“Do you _really_ think he’s being dramatic, Hermione?” Ron said, aghast. “Imagine if you were innocently sitting in our living room and you suddenly heard Hugo or Rose…doing that.” Ron shuddered.

Hermione worked past her initial disgust. “Well, while I believe Lily should have been more respectful and not had sex underneath her parents’ roof, she _is_ a woman and Harry can’t realistically expect her to remain an innocent child forever—”

“Since when was Lily ever an innocent child? She robbed our vault at Gringotts when she was four!” Ron interrupted.

“Ron, that was a misunderstanding and you know it; stop telling the story like that—”

“Actually, Hermione,” Harry interrupted. He leaned forward to place another card on the impressive card tower; Ron held his breath, but it thankfully didn’t blow. “I _can_ and _do_ expect that. I expect to live peacefully free from any proof that my daughter does…that.”

“Okay, we’re all adults; Harry, you’re a _grandfather_. Can we _please_ refer to sex as sex?” Hermione demanded.

“Not when we’re talking about our kids doing it,” Ron scoffed.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “No way.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. She looked apologetically towards Scorpius afterwards. “Tell Ginny that the boys have decided to stay in here and lick their wounds.”

“Oh…kay,” Scorpius said.

Hermione stood after glancing at her wristwatch. “I’ll walk back with you, actually. We should all be getting to bed. It’s nearly midnight. We’ve got the Burrow Christmas tomorrow and that’s always an ordeal…Ron? You coming?”

Ron shook his head. “No. No, I’m going to stay here with Harry.”

Harry reached over and clapped Ron’s shoulder with a grin.

“Fine. You two have your sleepover. I’m going to sleep in a real bed. Good night.”

Scorpius decided against waking Albus—he was sleeping so soundly on the sofa and Scorpius didn’t want to interrupt that—so he headed up to Albus’s childhood bedroom alone. He crawled beneath the covers of the bed Albus had been sleeping in earlier. He hugged Albus’s pillow to his chest. He closed his eyes and felt all the information from the day racing through his thoughts. He felt, strangely, that he’d just found himself at a crossroads, even though he hadn’t even spoken with Albus about it yet. He thought about all the different options open to them (and the options that were closed to them). He listened to the distant, hardly audible tolling of the Godric’s Hollow church bell as Christmas arrived. Laying there, his heart full of family and love, he only had one wish to make: that he and Albus might find a way to have their family. He was nearing sleep when the door creaked open. He lifted his head and watched Albus make his way across the room. He threw himself down onto the bed beside Scorpius, squirmed beneath the covers, and curled his body around his.

“Happy Christmas,” Scorpius whispered, but Albus was already asleep. He held Albus’s arms to his chest and drifted off, too. In his dreams, he saw that familiar room full of thousands of glass vials; Albus smiling wider than Scorpius had ever seen him smile before; Nora with a soft beam, her hand pressing both Scorpius’s and Albus’s hands to her expanding belly; a baby with strawberry blonde hair reaching a chubby hand towards him; a giggling girl of strawberry blonde kissing the scalps of two twin newborns; a sailboat’s silver sail reflecting the fury of the sun; children laughing…

He woke with a ragged gasp in the middle of the night, his heart racing, his entire body drenched with sweat. He felt sick to his stomach. Not for the first time, his first thought upon waking was: _I have to write that down, I have to write that down, I think I saw the future, I have to write that down…_

But the longer he blinked up at the ceiling, the further away his dreams drifted, until he found himself struggling to remember what had woken him in the first place. The only thing he could recall was that room of uncapped glass bottles that had haunted his dreams on and off since he was fifteen years old. He did remember, though, that this time, they’d been every shade of the rainbow. This time, he hadn’t felt panicked. This time, he thought his pocket might’ve been heavy from the weight of the missing tops.


	7. I. Invincible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily grapples with her intensifying feelings. Hugo and Aster come clean. Lily joins Caden for his 'family' Christmas visit. Harry and Ginny create a game to keep the Burrow Christmas drama-free. Lily finds strength in weakness.

For the second time since she’d returned to England, Lily woke in a different bed with a collection of aches and pains. But this time, as the memories of the night prior washed over her, she smiled.

Her eyes fluttered open. After staring up at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom for a smiling moment, she turned over in the small bed, her heart thudding in anticipation. When she spotted Caden’s hazy outline, her heart jumped. She quickly rolled over and leaned towards the floor, where her glasses were waiting on the carpet. She pushed them onto her face and returned to her previous spot. She examined him properly: he was stretched out on his back, the blankets tangled around his thighs, his brow smooth as he slept. She felt a tingle race down her spine. Her smile grew. She didn’t know why a part of her had worried he’d leave before she woke; he never did that. Maybe there was a part of her that was terrified that he would do to her what she had done to him. All she knew was that his presence was precisely what she’d hoped for from the moment she’d been pulled from her dreams (and maybe even during them, too). 

She was so preoccupied with taking in every inch of Caden—from his sleep tousled hair to his strong jaw to his broad shoulders to his beautiful body—that she hardly realized how drafty it’d become in the room overnight. When the chill in the room made her toes and her nose too cold to bear (when her heart was too heavy with affection to carry), she shifted across her bedsheets and curled up at his side. She pried a teddy bear out from underneath his arm (her childhood stuffed toys still lined the gap between her mattress and the wall; they’d gotten a bit mixed up with them during their wild night), threw it carelessly over her shoulder, and then lifted his arm up and wrapped it around herself. She curled up to his chest, wedged her cold toes beneath his thigh, and studied the profile of his face. Her heart was beating out a strange tempo as she reached up and gently traced the line of his lower lip. She stroked his cheek with her thumb, gently ghosted her touch along the love bites adorning his neck, and then pressed her palm over his heart. She let her eyes fall shut as she traced the words she couldn’t get past her lips into his skin. _I_ … _love_ … _you_ …she quite liked the way the Y and O felt as she traced them over his heart. The loops and curves were calming. She was feeling very drowsy now, with his body warmth washing over her and the comforting smell of his skin. Could she spend all Christmas here? Why couldn’t she spend all Christmas here?

She knew she’d eventually have to wake up and deal with her family. She’d have to face her dad and deal with his moodiness. She’d have to counter Rose and Albus’s taunts with better ones of her own.  Food, too. At some point (as her growling stomach reminded her), she’d have to get up for food. But for one of the first times in her life, she just wanted to stay still. She felt a contentment and peace that she hardly ever felt; she spent so much of her life jumping restlessly from one thing to another, never satisfied, never tired. It felt indescribably nice to feel like this now. And so she did just that: she stayed.

* * *

 

The first thing she did upon reawaking was hide a smile into Caden’s chest. She enjoyed the feeling of his hands caressing up and down her bare back. When he spoke, she could tell he had only just woken as well; he sounded half-asleep.

“Is that your hand underneath my arse?” he asked sleepily. “Follow-up question: why is your fist underneath my arse?”

Lily reached over with both her hands and set them on his stomach. “Both my hands are here and accounted for.”

“…Then what is underneath my arse?”

Lily yawned. She propped herself up on her elbow, lowered her skewed glasses long enough to rub the sleep from her eyes, righted them, and then wedged her hand beneath Caden. She felt the softness of what she quickly recognized as a bunny ear. She yanked the stuffed toy free and plopped her head back down on Caden’s shoulder. She held the bunny in front of his face.

“Floppy was getting cheeky.”

“Well, I’m flattered, Floppy, but I’ve got a girlfriend.”

Lily brought the bunny closer still, so Caden was nearly eye-to-eye with its strangely accusatory, beady-eyed stare. He pushed it away a second later.

“That’s fucking creepy,” he admitted. He wrinkled his nose. “You slept every night with that thing in your bed?”

Lily picked it back up and moved it back into his face. She mimicked the angry, rumbling sound her dragons gave when they were first learning to fight. Caden was laughing as he snatched it from her hand and chucked it across the room. Lily found herself flung over onto her back a second later. She grinned smugly as the weight of her boyfriend settled on top of her. He was _very_ awake.

“Good morning,” she said wickedly.

“Maybe for you. That bunny could give anybody nightmares,” he mumbled, his lips landing on her neck. Lily squirmed happily as he kissed over yesterday’s love bites; the slight sting woke her up fully.

“Yeah, well, I had to sleep beside _you_ , didn’t I? So I don’t feel sorry for you,” she shot back. “You’re much scarier than Floppy.”

“Yeah?” he challenged. He lifted up and met her eyes; Lily tried not to show the chills that raced down her spine immediately at the eye contact, but she gave a little, involuntary shiver. He grinned. Not a good sign. He’d definitely noticed. “That wasn’t what you were saying last night. And, don’t forget, Lily. I’m two points ahead of you now.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. She felt a familiar intermingling of arousal and competitiveness. She refused to drop her eyes from his. She lifted her legs and locked them around his hips, pulling his body flush against hers. She smirked when his lips parted. She leaned in so she could feel his breath against her lips, her gaze still stuck to Caden’s.

“I can retake my lead by noon,” she breathed.

“I doubt it,” he murmured back. “You didn’t last five minutes that last time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so—oi!”

While he was bragging, Lily had been paying close attention to his muscles. The moment she felt him begin to lean further into her body, she tightened her legs and flung him over to the right, forcing him onto his back. She straddled him and took his face into her hands. His eyes seemed to sparkle as they landed on hers again.

“I could have you losing a point in less than three minutes,” Lily boasted. She shifted over him pointedly, with the intention of proving her point, but as she did, she became actively aware of just how sore she really was. She winced and slid down to sit on his thighs. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at her; his expression had shifted from playful annoyance to concern seamlessly.

“What?” he asked.

“We overdid it last night. Fuck. I really wanted another go, too. But something tells me being unable to walk straight will only fuel Rose and Albus’s jokes…and I do not want to make it easier for them."

Caden looked torn between contrition and smugness over their memories from last night. His brow furrowed even as the corners of his mouth twitched up. Lily felt an obscene amount of affection flood her chest at the sight of it; as aggravating as his brief moments of cockiness were, they were just as endearing to her. She leaned down and caught his mouth with hers; the shape of his smirk against her lips only made her affection more overbearing. She kissed him hard, punched his shoulder, and then collapsed on top of him to squeeze his torso in a strong hug. He wrapped her up in his arms at once; she couldn’t remember ever feeling so safe.

“What the hell was that for?” he finally demanded (though he didn’t drop his arms from her, Lily noted).

“What was what for?” she asked, knowing exactly what he was asking.

“You punched me.”

She buried her face into his neck. She wished, more than anything, that she could’ve had him again, because she had this insatiable urge to get _closer,_ even though there was almost no way to do that. She squeezed him tighter. The words fell from her in a mumbled rush.

“Because you’re stupid and I love your stupid face way too fucking much.”

He was quiet for a few moments. Lily’s heart picked up as she processed what she’d just said. It wasn’t an ‘I love you’, but it was the closest she’d ever came to it. She felt her face burn. Ridiculous doubts flooded through her mind at a sickening speed. She was on the edge of taking her words back when she felt his body turn to the left. He rolled them over, so she was wedged between him and the bed once more. He lifted himself up just enough to look down at her. His eyes seemed bluer somehow; those chills returned, and she couldn’t look away. She felt her heart calm as his hand settled on her face. He stroked her cheekbone.

“My face, huh?” he finally challenged.

Even in her emotional and aroused state, she didn’t miss a beat. “It’s my third favorite part of your body.”

She swallowed hard. She wondered for a moment if he was feeling how she was—so full of love for him that she felt nearly violent. She wanted to simultaneously kiss him gently and squeeze the life out of him; she didn’t understand her feelings. She just knew that she was really glad that she was with him. And she really wanted to shag him.

Her longtime instinct was to immediately start joking about her number one favorite part of his body, but she couldn’t get herself to do it. She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth nervously. She tried to settle her nerves by tracing words into the skin of his back again, but her heart was fluttering anxiously despite. Why was she so afraid to tell him the things that he had already told her?

“Caden…” she began.

He waited very patiently, his gaze steady. Lily stroked her hands down his back and took a deep breath.

“I…well. I…”

She trailed off again. Her face was burning. She wanted so terribly for him to read her mind, to be able to feel how she was feeling. Everything would’ve been so much simpler.

 _I love you_. “I want you all the time.” _I love you_. “I want every morning to be like this.” _Don’t leave me. Don’t get sick of me. I love you. I love you._ “I—”

Her bedroom door was pushed open with such force that it slammed back into the wall. Caden’s instinct was to collapse down on top Lily, probably to shield their nakedness, but it certainly didn’t make things look any more innocent. Lily peeked underneath his arm; Finnigan was standing nonchalantly in the doorway, a thick slice of cake in his bare hand.

“Auntie Lulu,” he called loudly, unperturbed. He walked in, shut the door after himself, and padded over towards the bed. Caden rolled off of Lily, extracted the blankets from underneath them, and quickly flung them over themselves. Finnigan made to climb up onto the bed, but Lily shot a hand out, catching his shoulder before he could.

“Finnigan,” she said, annoyed. Her voice was tight with irritation. “Didn’t your parents teach you to knock?”

Finnigan furrowed his brow. He looked at Lily like she was extremely stupid. “This is not a house, Auntie Lulu. It’s a bedroom.”

“You should always knock on all closed doors!” Lily snapped. “What do you want?”

“I want to eat my cake.”

“Well, you’ll have to go hide elsewhere! I’m busy! Go on, shoo!” Lily ordered. She gestured towards the door. Finnigan looked curiously from her to Caden.

“What are you doing?” he wondered.

“Giving massages. Go.”

He didn’t budge. “What happened to your neck?”

“Rough massages. _Go_!”

Finnigan blinked. He looked to Caden, as if Lily hadn’t said a word. “Cade, can I eat my cake here?”

Caden hesitated. Lily narrowed her eyes at him. He was sometimes a bit soft with the nieces and nephews.

“Why don’t you go hide in Albus’s room?” Caden suggested. Lily choked back a laugh. _Serves Albus right._

Finnigan considered that.

“He won’t say ‘yes’. About cake.”

“Scorpius will say yes,” Lily told Finnigan. “Just give him those eyes of yours…yep, those ones. You’ve got it. Now get out. Bye.”

Finnigan reluctantly walked from the bedroom, his head hanging low in disappointment. He was sadly murmuring something about _‘my Auntie Lulu’_ underneath his breath as he left. Lily curled back up against Caden once they were free from prying kid eyes.

“I feel bad for him,” Caden admitted with a frown. “That’s his special thing with you.”

“Yeah, well,” Lily began, her hand sliding down his naked body. “ _This_ is my special thing with _you_. You got me first.”

He brushed her hair back from her face curiously. “What were you going to say before he entered?”

She paused. “Er…Happy Christmas. I was going to say ‘Happy Christmas’.”

Before he could challenge that, Lily shifted over to sit atop him again, her hands falling to grip his face. She snogged him hard, feeling nearly feverish with love and want. Caden’s hands gripped tightly at her hips, his fingers pressing right back into the bruises he’d made the night before. Lily hardly processed the pain.

“I thought you said you were too sore,” he reminded her, as she made her intentions very clear.

“I say a lot of rubbish,” she said, out of breath, her heart racing. “I’m a Gryffindor. We’re built for strength and resilience.”

“More like built for reckless self-indulgence…” he teased beneath his breath.  

It wasn’t until they were joined again, and his eyes were locked on hers, that she realized she was searching for another way to say her words without really saying them.

* * *

 

She was sprawled out across the bed, her cheek resting over Caden’s ribs and her arm thrown over his stomach, when the door opened. She knew—without looking—that it wasn’t her dad or brothers, because despite the blanket loosely covering their lower halves, it was obvious what they’d been doing, and her dad and brothers certainly would’ve run in the opposite direction. Lily heard whoever it was grabbing something from the floor. A second later, a second blanket fell down atop her and Caden, who was still snoozing.

“Look,” Lily’s mum greeted. She shut the door behind her. Lily groaned. _Here we go._ “It’s eleven, Lily. Your dad’s still in the shed. You’ve got to come downstairs and see your family. It’s Christmas.”

Lily reluctantly rolled over so she could greet her mum.

“What is it with this family and just barging into rooms?” Lily grumbled. “You’ve got to fix the anti-lock charm on the doors up here, Mum. We’re no longer four-year-olds who lock you out so we can eat entire pies. Evra last night, Albus last night, Finnigan earlier—”

“Oh, Merlin,” Ginny groaned. She lifted Lily’s suitcase off the chair underneath the window and sank down in it. She dropped the book she was carrying onto her lap and sighed. “Please tell me you didn’t traumatize him.”

“No, we weren’t shagging when he walked in,” Lily reassured her. She narrowed her eyes at her mum as she casually opened the book in her lap, as if she had every intention of having a nice reading session in Lily’s room. “Could you leave? Only this is a bit awkward, with us being naked and all.”

“Nope. Clearly you’ll stay holed up in this room until somebody forces you out, so that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sit here and make this extremely awkward for you as long as you’re in here.”

Lily sighed. “Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was nearly lunch. I’ll come downstairs, okay?”

Her mum didn’t budge or even lift her eyes from her book.  “How do I know you’re not just saying that to get me out?”

“Because honestly, Mum, I couldn’t _have_ another go, even if I wanted one,” Lily admitted. Her mum grimaced. “Okay? So can you leave? We need to get dressed.”

“Fine, all right,” her mum allowed. She closed her book, stood, and then pointed sternly at Lily. “But prepare yourself for a mopey dad all day long; your stunt last night really traumatized him.”

“It wasn’t a stunt! It was an accident! I cast the spell perfectly at the start, only…well, I forgot it only lasts a few hours…”

Her mum stared at her in disbelief. “You’re either in love or drugged.”

“Probably the first,” Lily shot back automatically. Her cheeks colored. Her mum arched an eyebrow, but beyond a small smile, she didn’t comment on it. “Bye-bye now, Mummy.”

“Don’t you get smart with me,” her mum warned. She leaned over and picked up Lily’s discarded dress from the night before. She tsked. “You’ve spilled something on this. And you can’t charm this fabric. You’ll have to take it somewhere to be cleaned.”

“It’s one of Aster’s dresses. I’ll just take it to her shop. She can fix it,” Lily dismissed. She felt Caden shift beneath her. Uh oh. When his eyes fluttered opened and he spotted Lily’s mum, he jumped. His hands grappled towards his hips, as if to cover his privates, but Lily’s blanket had been covering his lower half even before her mum entered.

“Morning, Caden. Merry Christmas,” Ginny greeted calmly.

He pressed the back of his hand over his eyes. “Good morning, Ginny,” he said.

“She’s trying to shame us from the room,” Lily explained.  

“It’s working.”

“Yeah? Great,” Ginny said. “That’s what you get for keeping my daughter captive for nearly twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours? Seriously?” he muttered, sounding a bit impressed. Ginny arched an eyebrow. His expression fell into something politely chagrined as he lowered his hand and spotted her expression. “I’m sorry, Ginny. To be fair, though, it was an equal captivity.”

“Nobody who knows Lily would doubt that. Well,” she dropped Lily’s stained dress onto the chair. “I hope it was worth the awkward conversations you’re both going to have all day long.”

Lily thought it definitely was. When she looked up and locked eyes with Caden, he seemed similarly confident. They shared a quick grin. Lily hardly processed her mum’s annoyed sigh.

“You are absolutely incorrigible and I fear you’re corrupting Caden,” Ginny murmured. Lily snorted against her withheld laughter. Caden was somehow able to suppress his own grin. “See you downstairs.”

They waited until her mum’s footsteps had fully descended the stairs. Lily snickered.

“I’m _corrupting_ you, am I?”

“Must be,” he shot back. “Naughty thing, you are.”

“I suppose I should end things, then. Let you run off with somebody nice and innocent…one of my dorm mates…Victoria should do the trick, I think? Oh, can you imagine fucking her? She’d rock that missionary, Caden, and she’d probably wear nice bridal lingerie every night, and she’d moan _I love you_ nonstop…”

Lily’s teasing broke off as a pillow smacked gently across her face. She wrestled it from his grasps and smacked him back. He grasped her waist and pinned her to the bed; she punched hard at his shoulder and pushed against his solid form, eventually pushing him back over onto his back. She pinned him down. _Just teasing, no shagging. Just teasing, no shagging._

“I think you might be partially thinking about yourself, Lily,” Caden told her, his voice low. “Don’t think I missed what you almost moaned last night.”

Lily was so surprised that her hands slackened. He rolled her back over easily. She stared up at him, her heart throbbing, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. Her throat narrowed. She didn’t know why, but she felt so _exposed_ – so frightened—that she had the urge to hide under the covers. She figured she probably looked like a cornered animal; she could feel how wide her eyes had gone. His eyes softened.

“Of course,” he allowed, his voice gentle, “maybe you were just going to say that you love my face.”

“Maybe,” she said quickly, glad for the out he’d just given her, even though they both knew that _wasn’t_ what she’d been intending to say. He smiled at her, though it looked a bit sad. Lily wondered why he would’ve suggested that when he knew what she’d been trying to say (when he wanted to hear it so terribly). She realized he probably cared more about her own discomfort than his. Her heart swelled and ached. She swallowed hard. “But maybe not.”

He arched an eyebrow. His smile seemed tender, somehow. It made Lily feel loved. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, her own smile forming. Her hand was trembling slightly as she reached up and touched his face. She slid her palm over his smooth cheek. “I actually love _every_ part of you.”

Closer and closer still—and yet she still felt so far. It was enough for him, though. It appeared to be more than he’d expected. He gathered her into his arms and kissed her with so much emotion that Lily felt a bit weightless. She was finding it difficult to remember what they were supposed to be doing…were they supposed to do something? What was today?

“LILY LUNA _POTTER_!” Her mum suddenly screamed. Her fist pounded against the door. “NOW! OR I’LL SEND ROSE AND ALBUS UP AND THEY’LL NEVER LET YOU TWO LIVE IT DOWN!”

“Fuck,” Lily groaned. Reality slipped back into her conscious thoughts.

“She’s right, sorry,” Caden said, rolling off of her. She felt terribly cold in his absence. “She’s right; we’re acting like we’re on a sodding honeymoon, and it’s _Christmas_ …I can pretty much forget ever being accepted by your family now, can’t I?”

“Well, it’s your fault for fucking me so loudly last night,” Lily said

“Oh, that’s rich, you liar! You were the one nearly shrieking!”

“Was not!”

“Was _too_! _And_ you insisted that you could handle being in charge of the silencing charm!”

“It was you who couldn’t behave himself all day! You were making eyes at me since we walked in the Den! What was I supposed to do?! Ignore it?! Nobody on _earth_ has _that_ much self-control, Caden!”  

“Me?! _I_ was making eyes? You were practically—”

“CADEN ROWLE!” Ginny warned from the other side of the door. “I HEAR YOU BICKERING WITH HER! Don’t bicker with her! She thinks it’s sodding foreplay! I won’t leave until you two come out of there!”

“We should go on holiday next Christmas,” Lily muttered, annoyed.  

“I HEARD THAT! AND IF I HEAR TALK LIKE THAT AGAIN, I’LL RETURN YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFTS!” Ginny shouted.

Lily sighed.

* * *

 

True to her word, Ginny was waiting outside of the door with her arms crossed when Caden and Lily finally stumbled out. Lily grimaced as the sunlight from the wall-length window accosted her.

“Arg,” she groaned. She rubbed over her stinging eyes. Her eyesight potion always made her sensitive to light for a few minutes; she’d just taken today’s dose a few seconds ago and briefly wished she hadn’t. She should’ve just taken her contraceptives only and dealt with her glasses.

“That’s what happens when you practically hide in a cave for twelve hours,” her mum said, not the least bit sympathetic to Lily’s pain.

“It’s my potion, it’s not that,” Lily muttered, her hand still rubbing her eyes.

“Sorry, Ginny,” Caden said again.

Ginny stepped between them and looped an arm through Lily’s left and Caden’s right. She pulled them towards the stairs and began talking as she did.

“Imagine, if you will, Lily getting pregnant.”

Lily choked on air and stopped in place. Caden muttered _whoa, what?_ and looked at Ginny like she’d suddenly grown another head. Ginny stubbornly pulled them forward and continued.

“Imagine her carrying a little baby—half you, Caden, and half you, Lily—and then suffering through _hours_ of _excruciating_ labor to birth it. Imagine then, Lily, that you lose so much blood you’ve got to be on Blood Replenishing Potions for days.”

Lily realized where her mum was going with this. She rolled her eyes as they descended the stairs.

“And then, Caden, imagine you and Lily raise the tiny baby up, loving it and forgiving all its naughtiness year after year, taking care of it when it’s ill, cuddling it when it’s sad, watching it become your pride and joy and going off to achieve all the things you ever wanted for it—and then imagine having to listen to it explicitly shagging somebody. Your little, tiny baby.”

Caden grimaced. Lily rolled her eyes.

“Except it wouldn’t _be_ a little baby anymore. It’d be an adult. Next.”

“It’ll always be your baby. Right, Caden?”

“Er…I don’t have a kid.”

“But you can imagine. You’re slightly more empathetic than Lily.”

“…Okay, sure. It’s always your baby.”

Ginny stopped them at the first level. She turned to face them, so her back was to the doorway. “You two are really in for it.”

And with that, she stepped backwards into the kitchen with a smile, leaving Caden and Lily somewhat apprehensive. Lily wasn’t sure she wanted to see her dad upset, even if she thought the reasons were stupid and sexist. Caden sighed.

“I dealt with your dad hating me once before…at least he’ll actually have a reason now,” he muttered, and with that, he walked bravely into the kitchen. Lily wondered how much Gryffindor he had in him, after all. She took a deep breath and followed after. Everybody fell silent as they entered. Her nieces and nephews cheered and ran over to greet them, Rose and Albus exchanged a look, and James hid his face into Nora’s shoulder like he couldn’t bear to meet Lily’s eyes. Lily searched the room for her dad. He looked away from her as soon as she looked at him. She sighed.

“Okay, so we had sex,” Lily greeted. “So what? You’ve all done it.”

James gasped, horrified. “The _kids, Lily_!”

“Okay, fine. You’ve all done it—except for the kids. Obviously, James,” Lily rolled her eyes again.

“Mmm, yeah…difference is, Lily, we all do it in private,” Rose piped up. Ron had been cramming eggs into his mouth, but at that (Rose including herself in the ‘we’) he choked. Hermione was rolling her eyes as she patted his back.

“It _was_ private,” Lily argued hotly. “It was _my_ bedroom. And can we all stop pretending like doing silencing charms when you’re…preoccupied…is easy?! Because it’s actually very difficult and that’s why some people buy those fancy silencers in Nancy’s Fancy Shoppe in Diagon Alley!”

“I think I speak for everybody when I say…let’s all chip in and buy Lily one of those,” Albus said. Laughter flooded the kitchen. Lily narrowed her eyes.

“Yeah, go on, Al,” she said. She went to fling her hair over her shoulder but fell short. “Encourage me to shag in public places. Not that I need the encouragement.”

His smile disappeared to make room for a deep, disgusted grimace.

“I think we should forget about it,” Scorpius said suddenly, his eyes on Lily. His gaze was kind. Lily smiled gratefully at him. “Lily’s right. Everybody has their…slip-ups. We’re all adults—”

“My _babies_ , Scorpius!” James repeated, annoyed.

Lily pried Finnigan and Henry from her legs and leaned down so she was eye-to-eye with them.

“Boys, did you have a great Christmas Eve?” she asked.

At once, they both fell into excited chatter about all their toys and getting to stay up late and all their sweets. Lily gave James a pointed look.

“I think your ‘babies’ are just fine.”

“What about poor _Evra_?” James reminded Scorpius and Lily. He pointed at the window above the sink. Lily spotted Evra and Remus sharing a broom, laughing as Vic and Teddy tried to ‘race them’.

“She looks fine, too. She thought we were wrestling.”

“So it’s fine,” Scorpius stressed.

“It _is_ Christmas,” Hermione added. She looked at Rose in particular. “We won’t have bullying on Christmas.”

“Bullying! When has anybody ever bullied _Lily?_ ” Rose grumbled, but her mum gave her another stern look, so she fell silent. She snatched her mug up from the table. “I’ll see you lot at Gran’s. I’m going back to the cottage to help Iset with the cats.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Lily called loudly, unable to resist.

Ron choked again. This time, Ginny had to hurry over to help Hermione pound at his back. Rose glared at Lily. Lily glared back. Caden stepped between them, breaking their eye contact.

“Tell Iset I said hello,” Caden said firmly. Lily made to step around him, to shoot another comment at Rose, but Caden stepped in front of her again. “I’ll see you two tonight. Unless…unless I’m uninvited?”

He sounded very unsure. It made Lily’s protectiveness surge. She shoved past him and shot a threatening look around the kitchen, as if _daring_ any of them to revoke his invitation to the Burrow Christmas, but everybody looked shocked at the mere thought. Ginny walked over and pulled Caden into a hug at once.

“Hush with that,” she scolded. She pulled back and set her hands on his shoulders, peering at him seriously. “You’d never be uninvited.”

He glanced over at Lily’s dad. Ginny didn’t miss it.

“Don’t worry,” she repeated firmly. “Scorpius is right. We’ll all live. It’s Christmas. No bickering amongst family.”

He smiled. Ginny patted his cheek fondly and then turned around to address the rest of the family.

“We’re going to bury this for good. Would anybody like to make a few last minute jokes before we do?”  

James pursed his brow in concentration. Albus crossed his arms and smirked.

“Aw, I never come up with my best material on the spot, Mum!” James complained. “Can I have until we leave for Gran’s?”

“No. I don’t want to hear any more about this. Ten…nine…eight…seven…--”

“I think Lily had something to tell you last night, Caden,” Albus blurted, amused.

“Albus! We said we wouldn’t talk about that!” Hugo yelled from across the kitchen. He was at the oven, clearly baking something. He shook a spatula at Albus sternly.

“Er…erm…” James was still trying to come up with a joke.

“Six…five…four…”

“She _loves you_ , Caden, has she told you that yet?” Albus continued, smirking.

“SHUT IT, YOU!” Lily shrieked.

“Three…two…one—that’s it! I don’t want to hear any more about it! It’s over!” Ginny declared, right as Lily was about to throw herself across the kitchen at her brother, fists flying. She ground her teeth. Caden gave her a look, clearly imploring her not to start a Christmas morning brawl. She sighed.

“… _Fine,_ ” she said.

James snapped his fingers. “Okay. Got it. What did the dragonologist say to the—”

“NO, JAMES!” Ginny and Harry boomed.

He sighed, disappointed. “It’s a great one, though…”

Nora leaned over and kissed him gently. She held Delilah up in front of him; James was already smiling as he leaned in to kiss his daughter. She cooed happily and patted lovingly at his face.

“Whisper the joke to me,” Nora prompted.

“Nora!” Ginny complained.

“I won’t tell anyone!” Nora promised.

James leaned in and whispered the joke into her ear. Lily watched with annoyance as her sister-in-law fell into a fit of hysterical giggles. She pressed her hand to her lips and struggled to choke it back.

“Sorry,” she told them. Her eyes were watering as she struggled to fight back her laughter. “It's just…it _is_ a great one.”

“I want to hear—”

“ _No,_ Ron!” Ginny snapped. “It’s _over_.”

Lily sighed and walked over to get something for breakfast. It wouldn’t really be Christmas without bickering and a Lily-provided scandal, anyway.

“Tea?” she asked Caden.

“Yeah, all right,” he nodded, just as at home in the chaos as she was.

* * *

 

Lily spent the next two hours standing on the cold grass trying to teach Finnigan the proper way to fly on a broom, but he absolutely resisted her advice. Caden had to leave halfway through their lessons to head back to his flat to tidy up before the Burrow Christmas (they always had Aster, Hugo, and Lily’s Mini Death Eaters—now their friends—over for a Christmas party afterwards), and figured the best time to talk to her dad would be while he was gone. So after realizing her nephew was a bit hopeless, she left him hanging like a sloth from his broom and headed towards the shed. She knocked once on the door.

“Dad? Are you in there again?”

“…Yes.”

“I’m coming inside.”

“Fine.”

Lily stepped into the shed. Her dad was marking essays on the sofa. She walked over and plopped down beside him. He shot her a wary look from the corner of his eye but otherwise ignored her. Lily leaned over and pulled the essay from his hands after another moment of being ignored. Her dad glared.

“I can still ground you as long as you’re under my roof,” Harry warned. “Or put you on the naughty step. Give me my essays.”

Lily shoved the essays over into his hands. She crossed her arms stubbornly as he immediately returned to his marking. “Fine. I’ll go sit in time out for twenty minutes. Can that settle this?”

“This is not a naughty step sort of problem, Lulu.”

“It’s not actually a problem at all,” Lily snapped. “I’ve got a question, Dad. If it had been Albus and Scorpius that you’d overheard, or even James and Nora, would you be this upset about it?”

Her dad paused. He looked at her for a moment, faltered, and then looked back down at his essays.

“I thought so,” she said. “And that’s _rubbish_. I should be allowed to be an adult like you let them be adults.”

“I _would_ be disturbed if I’d overheard them because they’re my kids,” her dad argued.

“But not _as_ disturbed, because they’re your sons and they’re allowed to act like real, actual adults.”

Her dad turned the essays over and faced her.

“Or maybe they have the decency and respect for their parents not to do that in the Den,” Harry shot back coolly.

“What does my shagging somebody have to do with my respect for you and Mum? Can you honestly say you and Mum never shagged at the Burrow? _Ever_?”

Her dad hesitated for a bit longer this time. He rubbed the back of his neck guiltily. Lily crossed her arms and sniffed. “Precisely. So don’t be a hypocrite, Dad. I’m really sorry that you had to overhear. I had to overhear Scorpius and Albus the other day, and I agree: it’s disturbing.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You’re…not going to argue? You’re going to…sympathize with me?” A beat. “Who are you and what have you done with my Lulu?”

Lily shrugged. “I’m right here. I just know how it feels and I didn’t mean to upset you or ruin Christmas Eve.”

His incredulous expression grew. Lily sighed as he reached forward to feel her forehead, as if she had a temperature.

“I’m not allowed to be nice?”

“Sure, sometimes, I guess…” her dad trailed off. His nose wrinkled as he fully processed what she’d said. “You overheard Al and—no, wait, never mind. Forget I asked.”

“Yeah, I’ll spare you the details,” Lily agreed. She reached over and patted his shoulder nicely. “You’ve been through enough. And you should be glad it _wasn’t_ James and Nora you overheard. Nobody’s ever overheard them but I bet they’re the worst…they’ve got to be absolutely _nauseating_ …ugh. They probably have loads more disgusting pet names for each other, ones we’ve never heard and hopefully never will.”

Her dad suppressed an amused grin. He heaved a sigh a moment later. “All right. Shall we pretend this never happened and never speak of it ever again?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Lily.”

“Flippin’ yeah,” she amended.

Her dad snorted. Lily laughed. Soon, they were laughing together, and Lily felt impossibly happy. She hated when her dad was unhappy with her. It always felt like coming home when they made up again.

After their laughter pandered off, her dad looked at her with an oddly concerned expression. Lily automatically looked down at her body, to see if any of her sex marks were visible, but she didn’t see anything. She reached up to her neck, but her fingers grazed the ribbed cotton of the old turtleneck jumper she’d thrown on that morning before exiting her bedroom. Nothing visible there, either.

“What?” she finally asked.

“Nothing. Well. I just…I haven’t had a chance to ask you with all that’s been going on. How are you, Lulu? With the dragons and all, I mean.”

Lily’s heart plummeted. She looked away. It was the very last thing she wanted to talk about. She struggled to keep the horrible, traumatizing memories at bay.

“Let’s leave that for now, yeah?” she said, her voice a bit wobbly.

“Not ready to talk about it?”

“Not even close.”

“Okay, sorry,” her dad said quickly.  There was an awkward pause. “You’re okay, though?”

“Yeah,” Lily said at once, and to her amazement, she realized it was true. She met her dad’s eyes. “Yeah. I am. I’m actually…I feel better than I’ve felt since it happened.”

Her dad smiled. “That’s good. Great, actually.”

“Mmhmm,” Lily agreed. She let her head fall against her dad’s shoulder. She thought about those weeks following the dragon babies’ deaths. She had felt so depressed that even thinking about it now made her feel a gaping emptiness in her chest. It was so different from how she’d felt that morning in Caden’s arms. She stared at the shed floor. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I love him.”

Her heart squeezed. She felt an indescribable longing for Caden. And she was surprised to find that the words felt so _right_. She wondered if finally saying them to Caden himself would feel that way, too. It was a relief to finally have those hoarded words out in the open, even if it wasn’t yet to the right person.

Her dad reached up and cradled her head to his shoulder. She felt his kiss to the top of her head a moment later.

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted.

Lily kicked sheepishly at the floor. She was glad she couldn’t see her dad’s expression.

“It’s a bit scary,” she admitted.

Her dad chuckled. “Yeah, Lulu. It is.”

Lily sat up. She met her dad’s eyes. He was looking at her fondly.

“What if I tell him and then he leaves?” she asked. Her voice was thicker than she would’ve liked. Her dad didn’t seem to find the question as alarming as Lily did. And she realized, with a rush of shame, that what she was most afraid of was _exactly_ what she had done to Caden. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“Do you think he’s going to leave?” her dad asked her.

Lily thought about the tender look she caught in Caden’s eyes sometimes. His strong, steady arms around her. His sensible mind—his unwavering love.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t, either,” her dad said. “But I can promise you one thing. Even if that happened one day, even if you felt like your heart had been ripped into two…you’ll always have me. Mum and I, Albus and James, Nora and Scorpius. We’re not going anywhere.”

Lily hugged her dad. It was a great thing to hear in that moment, because as she remembered what she’d done to Caden, she felt more and more unlovable. She stood after a brief hug.

“Where are you going?” her dad wondered.

“To Caden’s flat to get ready, then to Aster’s to figure out if she’s coming to the party tonight, and then I’ll see you at Gran’s. Oh—will you check on Finnigan in a moment? I left him hanging like a sloth in the air. He won’t come down.”

“Yeah, he’s…uniquely determined to fly like that.”

* * *

 

When Lily stumbled out of Aster’s fireplace, she was shocked to find her cousin standing in front of her, covered in ash and brushing soot from a massive cake tin in his hands.

“ _Hugo_?” Lily demanded.

Hugo jumped. He spun around and stared wide-eyed at Lily. They held an incredulous gaze.

“What are you doing here?!” they chorused.

“What am _I_ doing here?!” Lily demanded, outraged. “I’m her best friend! What are _you_ doing here?!”

“I—I—I…” Hugo looked down at the cake tin in his hands. “I—brought her cake!! To say…‘thank you’!”

Lily narrowed her eyes. Suspicion crawled up her spine. “Thank you for _what_?”

“For…helping me prepare for my shop’s opening! It’s right across from hers, don’t forget! She’s been…helping me get ready!” Hugo said. He still had a bit of wayward flour smeared on his cheeks, but even with that dusting of white, his cheeks were darkened with embarrassment. He tripped backwards and shoved the cake tin into Lily’s hands.

“Okay, so, you can give her her cake, and tell her I said…thank you,” he said.

“O…kay,” Lily allowed. She watched her cousin stumble, blushing, back to the fireplace. Before he stepped in, she called after him. “Hugo. Do you fancy her?”

Hugo’s cheeks only darkened. Lily sighed.

“Aw, Hugh,” she said. She walked up to him and heaved another sigh. This wasn’t what she wanted. Hugo was such a romantic—this was going to break his heart. Best to set him straight before Aster had to. She reached up and patted his shoulder. “It’s nothing personal. She’s just not really into dating—she’s tried it a few times and always said it was a bit boring. You’ll bounce back from this.”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“What what?”

“Erm…nothing. Bye. See you at Gran’s.”

With that, he scampered back into the Floo and disappeared. _What a weird man,_ Lily said to herself. She shook her head. She supposed she wasn’t _that_ surprised; Hugo and Aster spent a lot of time together, her best friend was really hot, _and_ she had a soft heart like Hugo did. She just worried it would make things really awkward in their social group when Aster inevitably turned him down.

Lily tossed her coat onto the brown leather sofa and carried her stained dress and Hugo’s cake tin towards the back of the flat. She pushed the door to Aster’s bedroom open, kicked her shoes off in the corridor, and stepped in, prepared to throw herself down onto the bed and put the world to rights. She did not make it that far. She stopped dead in the doorway and stared at her best friend, who was lounging casually on her bed, wearing what Lily had envisioned when she’d earlier teased Caden with the phrase ‘bridal lingerie’. Lingerie leaning towards sweetness more than naughtiness, with layers of lavender chiffon and silk, her hair loose beneath her. Aster froze.

“Awww,” Lily finally said. She threw her dress over the opened wardrobe door to her right and then sat on the bed. “This is a really touching welcome, Ast. It’s very pretty.”

“I was expecting somebody else,” Aster admitted. She seemed a bit jumpy, which was odd to Lily, as Lily had seen her naked loads of times. Their preferred weekend night activity at Hogwarts had been nude swimming in the Great Lake (and daring to see who could bear to stay in the longest). So she could only assume Aster was a bit flustered at being caught being naughty, though that was also a bit confusing, as Aster knew better than anybody else that Lily always won in the naughty category.

“I figured as much,” Lily said. She dropped Hugo’s cake tin into Aster’s lap (not without noticing that Aster had dusted gold, shimmery powder over her thighs—she really _was_ waiting for somebody). “Who are you so dolled up for? Bad time for a sex call...you’ve had loads of unexpected visitors this hour. Hugo arrived seconds before I did! Bless him, he made you a cake. I think he fancies you a bit. I set him right for you.”

Aster opened and closed her mouth wordlessly.

“Is it Zabini? Are you fucking Zabini? I thought you didn’t like fucking Zabini. You did the one time and came back telling me sex was boring and overrated and that I was crazy for—aw, that’s nice,” Lily said, distracted from her spiel by the cake Aster had just revealed. She set the cake tin lid to the side. Hugo had recreated – in stunning, painstaking detail—Aster’s clothing shop. He’d even shaded the icing to make it look like it was midday, with shadows running long down the pavement. “He must _really_ want in your knickers.”

Aster looked up at Lily. Lily stared back at her. It came crashing down on her all at once.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Lily breathed, and then: “Holy _fuck!!_ You’re not! You’re not seriously telling me that my cousin was here for—a sex call!! I didn’t even know he _could_ have sex!”

“No! No, it’s not like that!”

“It looks exactly like that! His blushing, this cake that probably stands in for a nine-hundred galleon fee—”

“You think a night with me is worth nine-hundred galleons?” Aster asked, touched. Lily ignored her.

“Him scampering off like a dirty little rat, you lounging about in this sweet little—thing! Oh my…Muggle _God_! Aster! There are better people to have this sort of arrangement with! I could make you a list if you like! Hugo would be at the very bottom! He’s too soft-hearted; he’s already got feelings for you, I could tell, and I’m actually very upset that you wouldn’t think that through! I thought you didn’t _like_ sex? We don’t talk for a few weeks and I come back and you’re shagging Hugo in exchange for fancy cakes?! It’s like I don’t even know you anymore! What else has happened?! Have you joined a sodding dragon poaching community?!”

Aster gasped, affronted. She leaned over and smacked Lily’s shoulder. “Lily Potter! You take that _back_!”

“You tell me what you’re doing with my cousin and your—you know!” She gestured at Aster’s hips.

“Okay, fine, okay, but don’t freak out!”

“Don’t freak out?! What could be worse than Hugo paying you with cakes for sex?!” Lily gasped. She pointed at Aster. “Oh, Merlin’s wrinkly little—he’s paying you for _boring, vanilla_ sex! With _cakes_! What—are these cakes sugar-free, too?! That would definitely be worse!” She felt a bit faint. “You deserve better, Aster! You deserve passionate, rough sex and gooey, cavity-inducing sweets…I’m going to cry!! Look what you’ve done!”

Aster slapped the duvet impatiently. “No! Shut up and let me explain, for Merlin’s sake!”

“It better be a great explanation! Because you’re worth at least a ten-tier wedding cake if you’re going to let him lie on top of you like a limp fish—”

Aster reached out and closed her fingers around Lily’s wrist, squeezing tightly. Lily looked at her.

“Lily!!” Aster scolded.

“What?!”

“I’m not selling my body to Hugo for cakes! And I’m not just shagging him.”

Lily furrowed her brow. “How do you mean?”

Aster slowly let go of Lily’s wrist. She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. She took a deep breath.

“Well…I’m _with_ him. Like…his girlfriend.”

It got so quiet that Lily could hear next door’s dog pattering along the wooden floors. She stared.

“You’re Hugo’s girlfriend. Hugo is your boyfriend,” she deadpanned.

Aster nodded. “Yeah.”

Lily gestured at her friend’s lingerie. “This wasn’t for Hugo-bought vanilla sex. This was for…sentimental…Christmas… _love-making_.”

“Yeah.”

Lily pressed a hand over her mouth, horrified. “Good _God_ , woman. Who are you?!”

Aster kicked Lily’s calf. “Oi, shut up! You are the last person on earth to judge!”

“I’m not judging! I’m just…shocked! When?! _Why_?! Why didn’t you tell me?!” Lily demanded, outraged. And then: “ _Why_?!”

“Because he’s _lovely_ ,” Aster said, a bit defensively. “He asked me out one night, while I was helping him with his shop preparation, and he was all nervous and cute and stuttering, and I realized…he’s perfect. I couldn’t think of one thing I didn’t like about him. And we went on a date and it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, so we kept going on them, and I hope we keep going on dates forever. And I’ll have you know that I now have a healthy appreciation for _your_ favorite pastime—all thanks to Hugo.”

“Oh, Merlin…” Lily said, disgusted. She ran a hand through her hair and struggled to wrap her mind around the concept of _Aster_ and _Hugo_ being involved. Something horrible occurred to her. She looked around and lowered her voice. “Have you two done it…here? In this bed?” Lily lifted her legs up into the air, like the thought of having her body in contact with the bedding was repulsive. Aster laughed right as Lily did. She shoved her forward.

“Hush, you!”

They met eyes once their laughter pandered off. Aster smiled. Lily felt her heart swell. They slid over and threw their arms around each other at once. Lily smiled into Aster’s shoulder. She inhaled deeply.

“Mmm, fancy perfume,” she whispered. Aster laughed again. Lily played with the ends of her loose hair and tried not to feel envious of the length. “So does this mean you’re not angry with me anymore? Because that was incredibly tiring.”

“Oh, I haven’t been angry for two weeks,” Aster sighed. She leaned back, breaking their hug. She touched the opal set into the choker around Lily’s neck. “I was, though. I was very angry. This is nice.”

Lily got a few naughty flashbacks to the night before as she reached up to touch it. She smiled mischievously. “Yeah, it’s beautiful, right? Caden got it for me.”

Aster’s lips parted like she’d just remembered something. Without another word, she reached up and gave Lily’s cheek a feather-light slap, more for dramatics than anything. Lily rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“Your mum told me you’ve been shagging Caden! Leave—him—alone!” Aster pointed at her cross expression. “See, now I’m angry again, Lily! Go shag Avery or something and let Caden move on! Why can’t you just leave him alone?!”

“You’re gossiping with my mum now, are you? You two are best mates and you plait each other’s hair and have Floo calls to help each other decide what to wear in the mornings?!” Lily demanded. She felt an odd tangle of betrayal and jealousy.

“No, I’m not _best mates_ with Ginny, and you need answer my question!”

Lily wasn’t even sure where to start. “We’re back together again.”

Aster rolled her eyes. “Oh, here we go…”

“No, really. We are. Things are actually better than they’ve ever been. We’ve had sex so many times this week that I think my boggart would be a broomstick or a Muggle bicycle—I could hardly sit on hard surfaces this morning. You know, for a body part that’s supposed to be flexible and resilient enough to birth an actual baby human, it really is quite whiny.”

Aster gave her a dry look. “Oh, charming. And have you apologized with your actual mouth at any point?”

Lily arched an eyebrow. Aster caught her mistake in time. “With _words_ , I mean.”

“Yes, I have. I’ve apologized _loads_ of times, and a few of those times were with words,” Lily replied. She knew what was coming next, but she didn’t try to change the subject because she knew it needed to be dealt with.

“Why did you do it, Lily?” Aster demanded. She was looking at her with that same soft expression of disapproval she’d given her at the hospital. She had stayed with Lily until she was better, but once Lily was released, Aster had made her irritation quite clear. “He’s the one who somehow organized an emergency Portkey to New Zealand at three in the morning only _ten minutes_ after we were contacted. You didn’t see him while we were waiting outside the Burn Unit; he was so…I’ve never seen him like that. And then you just—”

“I know,” Lily interrupted quickly, her heart aching. “I know what I did. And I wish I hadn’t done it. But I did. I was scared, okay? I wasn’t right in the head. I’d just seen…well. You know. And I felt so horrible. And that made things more complicated and scary and I just wanted to run as far from it as I could. So I did. That’s why I did it. It wasn’t right.”

Aster laughed humorlessly. “No, it wasn’t.”

“We’ve reached a really good place. We’ve talked about it,” Lily reassured her. She looked down at her lap. “And, actually, you know, I love him back.”

“Of course I knew that. That’s what made the entire situation so fucking annoying,” Aster admitted. She stared at her warily. “No more running off and abandoning him?”

“No. No, never,” Lily promised. She took Aster’s hand in hers and turned it over, so her palm was facing upwards. She lowered her own hand down, so their palms were pressed together, and more importantly, so the tattoos on their inner wrists were. It was the first tattoo Lily had ever gotten (a white lily, while Aster got a purple aster). “I promise. See—tattoo hug and everything.”

“Good. Now, I’ve got something I want to show you, so put a lid on the boy talk.” She rose from the bed and walked over to the white curtain that cut across the massive room, separating the bedroom section from the studio portion. Lily waited on the bed as she pulled the curtain back and disappeared behind it. She came out a second later with something that made Lily’s eyes widen. She was holding a dress made of imitation Antipodean Opaleye scales. They were clearly synthetic; they were much shinier and made of a dainty sort of metal, but somehow they retained that same aura that dragon scales gave off. The dress looked impossibly beautiful and intimidating all at once (Lily’s preferred look). Lily wasn’t sure how Aster had achieved the pearlescent glow, but it was realistic enough to make her homesick for her sanctuary and Opal. She blinked against her burning eyes.

“I’ve been working on this since I got home. I was thinking, you know, about the poaching…” Aster walked over and sat beside Lily. She set the dress in her lap. Lily stroked her hands over the fake scales. They felt very different from real dragon scales, but she preferred that; too realistic and it might’ve upset her. She held it up and watched the way the light caught it. “I was talking to Jillian and Emi about how I didn’t think the trend would change soon enough…and it got me thinking…what if I could make something that fulfilled the fashion need without actually harming any real creatures? They do it with leather, right? It took a while but I finally found a way to make synthetic scales that look a lot like every type of dragon.” She paused. “I really needed your help, but after the way I yelled at you at the hospital…I didn’t want to ring. I hope I did your Opaleyes justice.”

“You did,” Lily promised her. She looked up at her best friend, her hand still stroking over the scales. She felt such an intense tangle of emotion that it nearly choked her. “I love this and I love you.”

“Oh, I love you, too, Lily,” Aster said, her tone equally soaked with emotion. She leaned in and pulled her into another hug. She whispered her next words into Lily’s hair. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I should have tried to understand. You were injured and it wasn’t right for me to scream at you.”

“No, I deserved it. I’ve been awful. I’m glad you did; I needed you to set me right,” Lily argued. She didn’t know if Aster realized it, but she was one of the few people who could get through to Lily when she was in moods like that. Lily leaned back and smiled at Aster. “You know, Caden and I have been trying to figure out ways to get the public to turn against the poached items for days. I wanted to go on a manhunt. He wants to do protests in the streets of Diagon Alley. But _this_ …this is clever.”

Aster smiled, pleased. “I mean, it’ll help, but it won’t fix the problem. We need to do something with it, too. I like Caden’s idea. Or…” Aster’s face brightened. “Oh! Or you could write a small note about the poaching—to raise public awareness and all—and we can make it into a tag to put on the clothes! And hang it on the wall above the rack! Even stitch a cloth one underneath my clothing label, so nobody can miss it! And we can have you sign your name, too, because everybody trusts you as an authority figure on dragons…Lily, let’s do it now!”

Lily laughed as Aster tugged excitedly on her hands.

“I’m meant to be getting ready for the Weasley Christmas…”

“I’ll dress you up in this gown and do your hair for you. I’ve got my family dinner at around the same time. We can get ready together.”

Lily beamed. “All right!! Yes! Let’s do this! For the babies!”

“For the babies!” Aster affirmed. “We’ll name the styles after the babies, too!”

“Yes!” Lily said excitedly. “Pearl for the Opaleye style! Ruby for Chinese Fireball! We can name the Common Welsh Green style after their mummy, Emerald! Amethyst for Hebridean Black! Amethyst loved my black jumper—she used to crawl beneath it and sleep on my tummy when she was a newborn; I think she liked the warmth and the rhythm of my breathing…oh! And we could name the Peruvian Vipertooth styles after Topaz! He’s from Opal and Emerald’s first hatching but he’s still my little mate. He got Opal’s great temperament; he _loves_ Caden still, even though everybody said he’d grow out of it… but your favorite is Flint, I know, so we could name another style after him, too!!”

“I _love_ Flint,” Aster agreed, her eyes sparkling. “He always tickles me with his snout and blows smoke on me! What a good dragon! And he never tries to roast me alive like Emerald and all the rest do!”

“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Lily reassured Aster. “The females are just impossible to work with if you’re not a professional. Mind you—I think Pearl was going to break that mold for once. She had Opal’s sociable nature _and_ she was very gentle. I loved her. No. I love her. I still do. Her being gone doesn’t change that.”

As Lily trailed off, she realized this was the most she’d talked about the babies since they died. She felt heart sick, but instead of feeling liable to vomit from the grief, she found herself just missing them terribly.

“I miss them.” Her eyes burned again. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair at all. But we’re going to get them—all of them, the poachers. And we’re going to make it so that nobody ever buys any of their evil products ever again,” Aster swore. She held out her pinky. Lily gave a watery smile and hooked hers with Aster’s. “I promise.”

“You’ll even kill them with me if it comes down to that?” Lily asked, only half-teasing.

“I’d help you kill them and I’d help you hide the bodies.”

Lily laughed, overjoyed. “This is why you’ll always have a special place in my heart.”

Aster leaned over and set her palm over Lily’s heart. “Ultimate loyalty-- that's what we've got."

They were still giggling as they went into Aster’s studio to begin their new mission.

* * *

 

Caden was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, carefully running his comb through his hair. Lily had made a silent entrance. Fighting back laughter, she tiptoed forward, braced herself, and then pounced. She threw her arms around his neck and latched her legs around his waist, sending him falling against the sink in surprise.

“For fuck’s sake! We’ve only just gotten back together and you’re already trying to murder me?!” Caden demanded. He steadied himself and then reached back, looping his beneath Lily’s bum, to help hold her up. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

“You need danger in your life,” she told him. “Without me, it’s boring paperwork, boring Public Bollocks, boring drinks with boring Zabini, boring sleep before midnight, boring moping…”

“Right,” he said. “And with you, life is…spontaneous morning shags on the kitchen table that make me late for meetings, experimental potions always bubbling in the living room and sometimes actually exploding, getting woken up at four AM on workdays so you can tell me about whatever dream you just had, and lying around the flat naked in late December.”

Lily rubbed her cheek against his. “Shall I leave?”

He tightened his grip.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“That’s what I thought,” she smirked.

He turned around, dropped her down onto the edge of the sink, and then spun around to face her. Lily looped her legs back around his waist and pulled him to her. She craned her face up and waited for his lips to fall on hers. She smiled into their kiss.

“This is a nice dress,” he appreciated, his hands sliding down the slick scales. “Opal-y. Did Aster make it?”

“Yes, isn’t it lovely? She’s done a whole line. Will you come see it tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” He rubbed his nose against hers; Lily leaned forward and kissed him again. “I thought you’d be gone longer. I’m guessing you and Aster made up?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. We worked on the dragon scale project for a bit, but I left early because she had somebody coming…over.”

Caden arched a coy eyebrow. He didn’t miss her deliberate pause between words. “Aster’s got a boyfriend?”

“Guess. If you can guess on the first try, I’ll let you have top next time we shag.”

“I already get top next time; it’s my turn.”

“I’ll let you have top the next _three_ times, then.”

He nodded once, confident. A smirk followed. “Hugo.”

Lily dug her heel into the side of his arse. “You prat! You already knew!”

“Hugo came here after you ran him off from the flat,” Caden snickered. “Not very nice—interrupting their…‘meeting’. You’d be in a right state if one of them did that to us.”

“Well I didn’t know, did I?!” she defended. “And I would not!”

“You would so. You’ve got no patience. But we can work on that since I’ve just earned top three times in a row.”

Lily mentally swore at her own body for reacting to those words. _No_ , _no, no, you’ve already overdone it as it is, you debauched idiot…_

“You’re so bloody aggravating,” she growled instead.

“Yeah? I think you’re getting a bit turned on, actually. Don’t worry…I won’t tell anybody that Lily Potter is a secret submissive.”

She scoffed. “What?! No! I am not! You take that back! I should sue you! For slander! I was born to be on top!”

He leaned in closer, his lips playing up into an unfairly sexy grin. She shoved his chest hard.

“Seriously, don’t give me that smirk; even sitting here right now is slightly painful, and if you keep giving me that look, we’ll be shagging on the tiles, and then we’ll _really_ have a conflict with my family because I won’t want to go to the Weasley Christmas since I’ll be stuck soaking in a hot sodding bath for ages.”

He made a face. “Noted. I’ll be your self-control. No shagging today.”

She heaved a disappointed sigh. Caden had great self-control and would actually stick by that, even when she undoubtedly changed her mind after three drinks. 

“This is great,” he told her, after putting more distance between their bodies. “You’re back in time to go with me to visit my only family for Christmas. I didn’t think you would be.”

Lily’s heart sank. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no—”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I’m going to get shit for _hours_ over what your family overheard—Fred and Roxanne are going to make sex noises at me all night long. So _you_ can come to my ‘family Christmas visit’ before we go to your Gran’s.”

“My family never tried to _murder_ you!” Lily said, outraged. “Your ‘cousin’”—she closed the word in finger quotes— “tried to kill me!” She paused. “ _And_ my dad! And my brother—on multiple occasions! And my other brother, Scorpius! And my other brother, James! And my sister! Probably also my mother, I can’t remember! And _you_ , my boyfriend! She tortured me for ages, too!”

Caden crossed his arms over his chest. “And if your aversion to seeing her was about that, I’d really understand. But you don’t want to see her because she’s nice to you.”

Lily caved in at once. “It’s fucking _weird_ , Caden. Unnatural. She played with my hair last time and I nearly smacked her across her face. In a way, I preferred her torturing me. The friendliness is _wrong_. You can’t just try to murder somebody’s family, torture them, and then pretend you’re best mates. I don't always understand life but I do understand that."

“She’s lonely. She’s trying very hard to heal. Draco said she starts getting dark thoughts again when she goes too long without visitors. She’s got her friends she made through the WWEU, but Christmas is about family, and we’re all each other has, really. She’s all _I_ have, family-wise. Unless you’d rather go visit the lovely Rowles?”

Lily scowled. Even the slightest mention of Caden’s paternal grandparents—the ones who'd raised him—put Lily on edge.

“I wouldn’t even visit them if it was an open-casket funeral. The way they talk to you...I’d like to put them _in_ those caskets.”

“They feel the same way about us, I’m sure. So Delphi it is, then. We’ll go visit her. It’ll be nice to remind her that she’s got us.”

“ _Us_ , huh? We’re an ‘us’ now? Do we need to start giving joint gifts to people and add my name to your flat lease? Shall we get cookware together? Monogrammed pillowcases?” Lily teased. Caden rolled his eyes. He took a step forward and reached up, tucking her hair behind her ears. Lily skillfully avoided his eyes, knowing she’d probably give in if she met them.

“Come on…” he pleaded. He cupped her face in his hands. She reluctantly met his keen eyes. “I’ll make it worth your while once we’re home tonight…”

She reiterated through clenched teeth: “ _No—shagging! I—feel—like—my—”_

“Not shagging,” he reassured, breaking off her objection. He gave her a pointed look. Lily caught on quickly.  

“Ooh,” she said. She shifted, her body already reacting to the offer. She grinned wickedly. “Hmm…yeah, all right. I’ll face my murderer for that.”

“You’re not dead, Lily, so she can’t be your murderer,” he sighed.

Lily ignored him. “Plus I’ll get to see Evangeline. I love that feathery bitch.”

Caden was laughing as he kissed her gently.

* * *

 

“Merry Christmas!” Lily blurted, as soon as Delphi opened the door to her flat. Lily pushed the wrapped gift into Delphi’s hands and brushed past her. “Evangeline!! My love!”

While Caden and Delphi exchanged more in depth niceties, Lily walked over to the parrot perch by the window, where Delphi’s bright, sailor-mouthed parrot was resting. Evangeline turned her head slowly and watched as Lily approached. Lily stood beside the perch, casually leaned back against the wall, and without looking at the bird, she slid her arm out in front of her. She grinned smugly when she felt the sharpness of Evangeline’s claws as she stepped onto her arm without hesitation.

“I’m the fucking bird and dragon whisperer,” Lily muttered.

The parrot gave a squawk, followed by: “Fucking bitch!”

Lily grinned. She brought her arm over carefully and stared fondly at the bird. “I think you’re my soulmate, Evangeline.”

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck-caw!”

“Fuck-caw!” Lily said back. The bird cocked her head slightly. She took a moment to itch the feathers on her tummy. She straightened and slowly turned to look at Lily again, her eyes eerily (and adorably) focused.

“Bitch! Cocking idiot! Hello!” Evangeline parroted.

“Hello to you too, you colorful bastard!”

While Lily scratched the bird’s bright red neck feathers, she watched Delphi and Caden sit down across from each other in a pair of armchairs. Delphi opened their gift (which was really Caden’s gift, as he’d picked it out and purchased it, but he’d insisted on adding Lily’s name to the tag), left momentarily to receive the gift she’d gotten for Caden and Lily in return, and then glanced over her shoulder at Lily.

“Hi, Lily. I see you’re back from New Zealand.”

“Yep. Here I am. In the flesh,” Lily affirmed.

“Are you going to stand there with Evangeline the entire time?”

Evangeline began ranting in a series of swears, made up words, and squawks. Lily snickered. “No…I’ll sit over there with Evangeline the entire time.”

She carried the bird over, sat down on Caden’s lap, and then nudged Evangeline over, so she was perched on Lily’s thigh instead. Caden reached over and scratched at the bird’s neck feathers. Lily slapped his hand away.

“My bird,” she teased under her breath.

Caden jostled his legs in response, sending Lily bouncing up in his lap. The motion made her soreness flare up again (and made Evangeline take flight momentarily). Lily winced.

“You prick, you know I’m—not right!” she snapped. “That hurt! And more importantly: you made Evangeline leave!”

He rubbed her thigh apologetically. “Sorry, forgot.” Evangeline landed on Caden's shoulder. "Oh, looks like it's my turn! Hello, sweet girl!"

Lily sulked slightly until Evangeline landed back on her leg; once she felt her claws press into her skin, she perked up. She stroked the bird’s colorful feathers and sighed happily. She loved that bloody bird. She definitely made visiting Voldemort's daughter worth it.

“How are you doing, Lily?” Delphi asked her, in that annoying pseudo-elder-sister tone that Lily hated so much. “I heard about your pets. I’m very sorry that happened to you.”

Lily’s eye twitched. “ _Pets_ ,” she mumbled under her breath. Caden tightened his hand on her thigh.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Lily finally managed, with some difficulty. “How’s Evangeline been doing?”

“Hello!” the bird cried, after hearing her name. “Cocking fuck! Fucking hell! Fuck you!”

“She’s still an arse,” Delphi admitted.

“And how are _you_ doing, Delphi?” Caden asked, when he realized Lily wasn’t going to.

“Good. I’ve got a job, actually. I start in February.”

While Caden and Delphi chatted about her upcoming job, Lily taught Evangeline a few fresh swearing combinations. She suffered through a conversation with Delphi about Albus and Scorpius, pretended to love the sodding _cookware set_ Delphi had given her and Caden (did she think they were engaged? Was she being cheeky? Was it a comment on Lily’s poor cooking skills?), and fed Evangeline some nuts. When it was finally time to leave, she had to suffer through the mandatory goodbye hug.

“You know, Lily,” Delphi said thoughtfully, after Lily had pulled back from their somewhat stiff embrace. “I actually like your hair like this more. You look badass.”

Lily blinked, stunned. She felt her opinion on Delphi warm a bit. Hair compliments were always appreciated.

“Yeah? You think so?” she asked.

“Definitely. You should keep it like that,” Delphi nodded. She looked to Caden. “It’s sexy, yeah?”

To Lily’s horror, Delphi leaned forward and pulled her fingers through it. Lily felt her jaw clench. She _hated_ when people she didn’t know well touched her hair. Lily gave Caden a furious look, imploring him to politely remove Delphi before Lily had to rudely do it.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “It’s very sexy. Careful not to mess it up, though, we’ve got somewhere to go.”

Lily had already reached up to slap Delphi’s hands away, but luckily, Caden’s calculated comment did what he’d intended: it made Delphi withdraw her hands from Lily’s hair. Lily side-stepped Delphi as she reached out again. She was unsure whether she was trying to touch her hair or hug her again, but she didn’t want either. “Okay, that’s enough. Thanks. Have a good Christmas. Your hair’s nice, too. Thanks for not torturing me or murdering me this time—you’re on a ten-visit streak, so that’s great, and I’m very proud of you! Keep being you, Delphi—your genes don’t define you! Give Evangeline a kiss from me.”

She was really being sarcastic and a bit condescending, but it came out sounding sweeter than she’d intended. Caden choked back a laugh while Delphi looked momentarily touched. Lily scampered off through the doorway before she could get roped into another hug. She waited somewhat moodily as the ‘cousins’ shared a hug. As soon as she and Caden were back in his flat, he lifted her clear off the floor and kissed her hard.

“I was being an arse!” Lily defended herself. “The tone just wasn’t right! I wasn’t trying to be sweet! Put me down! I’m not sweet! I’m naughty! Put me down!”

Caden obediently dropped her back to her feet, but he was still grinning.

“She won you over with that hair compliment, didn’t she?” he guessed.

“No! One hair compliment doesn’t make up for torturing me cruelly or touching my hair without permission!”

“I count that as a successful visit,” he said. “Misunderstood sweetness aside.”

Lily was glad it was over (and that she’d escaped without Delphi giving her any ‘life advice’, as she seemed to love to do). She watched as Caden washed and put away the new cookware set.

“I guess it wasn’t _that_ bad,” she decided.

At the same time, they said:

“I got to see Evangeline.”

“You got to see Evangeline.”

Lily peered off thoughtfully. “We should steal her. Or get our own parrot.”

There was a five-second pause that felt extremely long. Lily felt her cheeks heat up. She glanced at Caden from the corner of her eye; he had paused halfway through drying a frying pan.

“Yeah? How would that work? With you in New Zealand and me here?” he finally asked. “We can’t raise our parrot in a broken home.”

Lily looked away. “I dunno, I guess I didn’t really think it through…”

She felt a bit sick to her stomach. She realized that, up until that precise moment, she’d forgotten that they would have to go their separate ways after the New Year. They’d always made it work before, but it felt extremely painful now—the thought of getting back together only to return alone back to the place it’d fallen apart. To have to go to work and see where the babies had….well. And then returning to her flat all alone. How long would it be until they saw each other again? They usually tried for every other weekend at the least, but the international portkey offices were always unreliable; she could never really count on having one for sure until she was actually touching it. She still couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Maybe you and the parrot could visit. And stay.”

 _Who the fuck said that?!_ Lily felt her cheeks heat up more when she realized it’d been _her._ She made a mental note not to drink much tonight. If she was already this loose-lipped…well, the last thing she wanted was to _finally_ give Caden those coveted three words in front of her entire family.

“And _stay_?” Caden repeated patiently. “I’m not sure that’s _‘_ visiting’.”

“Oh, look at the time; we’d better go…if we’re late my gran will go spare…”

Because he could clearly tell she was flustered and on the brink of retreating from him out of sheer panic, he didn’t press the matter. But when he took her hand in the Floo, she looked up at him and found him smiling. She smiled back right before they went churning through the Floo network.

* * *

 

The _second_ they stepped into the Burrow’s kitchen, they were greeted by wolf-whistles and exaggerated sex sounds, courtesy of Uncle George’s kids. Lily made a rude hand gesture in response and scowled; when she glanced up, Caden had simply rolled his eyes once and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“You couldn’t keep your bloody mouth shut, could you?” Lily demanded, directing the question to James. He was sitting between Fred and Roxanne at the kitchen table. Even Delilah was giggling in his lap, though surely only because Clementine and Louis were making faces at her.

“He wouldn’t _dare_ keep something like this from us,” Fred said, aghast. “Little Lily Lulu! You dirty girl!!”

“Shut it before I _make you_ shut it,” Lily warned.

Their arrival had drawn other people to the kitchen, like moths to flames. Dominique stopped dead in the doorway when she saw who it was. A mischievous grin covered her face. She ran a hand through her short hair.

“The man of the hour,” she greeted Caden. She cocked an eyebrow. “I hear you did a good job last night.”

“Is _everybody_ talking about our sex life?!” Lily demanded.

Caden was unruffled—or at least appeared to be. He smiled at Dominique (it seemed a bit sarcastic). “Thanks, Dom.”

Dominique crossed over to stand in front of Lily. She crossed her arms. “Are you trying to steal the title of Weasley Rebel from me? I see you’ve stolen the short hair.” She reached up and tugged gently at Lily’s locks.

Lily ground her teeth. “It—was— _burned off,_ ” she said through clenched teeth. “And I’m rather cut up about it.”

“Why? Keep it. We can share the title. It’s hot.”

“That’s what I told her,” Caden shrugged.

“Well, I don’t want to be hot; I want to be able to smack people across the face with my hair.” Lily surveyed the kitchen again. “Where’s Albus? And Rose?”

“Entertaining in the living room.”

“Oh, _Merlin…”_ Lily groaned. She felt a bit weak with embarrassment. “Not in front of my grandad! They can’t tell Grandad!!”

“They’re not talking about you, actually. Scorpius and Iset reined them in rather spectacularly. It was like watching a sly and oddly affectionate circus show. Listen, if Little Molly and Lucy can’t meet your eye, don’t take it personally. They overheard when James was telling us. They’re a bit shell-shocked. I don’t even know if Lucy knew women could _be_ on top…”

Roxanne succumbed to laughter. “You’re awful, Dom! She’s an adult, of course she does! Leave her alone! _I_ love Lucy.”

“You love Lucy doing your finances for free,” Dominique muttered underneath her breath. Roxanne couldn’t hear it from her spot at the table.

“ _James_!” Lily cried, horrified. She turned her attention back to the real problem: the fact that Lucy knew those sorts of details. “How detailed did you get?!”

“Rose had told them plenty before I arrived!” James defended. He appeared nauseated. “Trust me; I did _not_ go that in depth! I don’t even want to think about that!”

Lily’s attention was drawn to the doorway again. She pointed angrily at Nora as she entered, carrying Henry on her shoulders and Finnigan in her arms.

“You! Why didn’t you control your husband?!” Lily demanded.

Nora furrowed her brow. “He’s not a horse, Lulu. Here, take Finnigan, he’s been asking after you for hours.”

Lily inspected Finnigan’s hands before she pulled him from Nora. She made sure they were clean; she didn’t want sticky cake-hands ruining the dress Aster had given her. Once she affirmed he was clean, she accepted him and propped him on her hip. He wrapped his arms around her neck and gave her a tight, overjoyed hug. Lily patted his back and dropped a quick kiss on his curly head.

“Does Molly know?” she heard Caden ask the rest of the group. He walked over and sat across from James. “Molly-Molly, I mean?”

“No, Gran doesn’t know. We’re not _cruel_ ,” Fred scoffed.

Finnigan drew Lily’s attention to his new shoes, and while she was examining them and chatting with her nephew, she heard the distinct sound of a high-five, followed quickly by:

“Don’t do that, Fred!” James said, aghast. “Don’t congratulate him! That was my _little sister_ he was shagging!”

“…Well, she’s not really _little_ anymore, right? I mean, she lives alone in a foreign country, she deals with fire-breathing monsters…”

Lily gasped; Finnigan mimicked it only a few seconds afterwards. She met his brown eyes.

“Did you hear that? Freddie called my dragons _fire-breathing monsters_ ,” she whispered to Finnigan.

He narrowed his eyes (even though he had a playful smile cropping up on his adorable, mischievous face).

“Let’s _get him_ ,” he stage-whispered back.

Lily nodded. “I’ll throw you at him, through the air, like a firework.”

Finnigan cackled and rubbed his little hands together. “YEAH!”

“Ready?”

Lily approached the table, shifted Finnigan, and stared hard at Fred.

“One…” she began.

“Two…!” Finnigan added.

“THREE!”

She swung her arms back and catapulted Finnigan over the table towards Fred. James gave a horrified shriek. Finnigan crashed into Fred’s chest, just as Lily figured he would. Fred caught the boy and looked at Lily, his dark eyes wide.

She pointed at him. “ _Not_ fire-breathing monsters.”

“ _Told you not to say that_ ,” she heard Caden murmur beneath his breath.

Finnigan decided to stay put in Fred’s lap, leaving Lily childless again. She was about to head into the living room to give Albus and Rose a smack when the two in question walked into the kitchen, Lily’s parents right behind them.

“All right, you lot,” Ginny greeted. She and Lily’s dad blocked the doorway. “Harry and I have rules for you. A little game, even.”

Ginny paused, her eyes falling on Lily.

“That’s a lovely dress, Lily. Those scales are prettier than real ones.”

Lily shimmied her hips so the sunlight could catch the large, iridescent metal scales. She caught Delilah watching her dress with a look of spellbound wonder.

“The game?” James pressed, curious.

Finnigan perked up. He scampered off Fred’s lap and bolted towards Ginny; she lifted him up into her arms and kissed his exuberant face.

“A _game?!_ I want to play!” he exclaimed.

“Here are the rules,” Harry said. “We’re not allowed to talk about S-E-X at _all_ while we’re here. Period. No references to...anything that might have happened in the past. No teasing. No _doing it_. We’re going to have a nice family dinner, okay? No teasing, no making your gran’s blood pressure spike.”

Lily and Roxanne accidentally locked eyes. They looked away quickly and struggled to contain their laughter.

“That’s not much of a game, is it?” Fred said, a bit disappointed. “Sounds more like a rule.”

“The person who breaks the rule has to pay up ten galleons for each slip-up. The person—or, ideally, people—that make it until the end of the night without talking about the prohibited topic get to have the confiscated money. It’ll be split evenly if there’s more than one winner,” Ginny continued.

Everybody sat up straighter, more interested now that they realized it was a profitable game. Lily didn’t bother; she knew there was no way she’d win.

“Does that include you and Dad, too, Mum?” Lily asked slyly.

“Better keep them away from the bath,” she heard Albus mutter beneath his breath. Ginny backhanded his shoulder gently without even looking at him.

“This includes _everybody_ ,” Harry said firmly. “Are you all clear on the rules?”

“Yes. No se—”

“My child!” James reminded Roxanne quickly.

“No S-E-X jokes, discussions, teasing—”

“Or actually doing it,” Ginny added, interrupting Roxanne. She shot a pointed look at Lily. Lily glared back.

Finnigan was beaming. “I’m gonna win all the money!! No S…E?...X!”

James covered his mouth with his hand, horrified. Lily cackled. Finnigan looked up at Ginny a moment later.

“Ginny?”

“Yes, love?”

“I don’t know this game,” he admitted quietly.

* * *

 

Lily’s first challenge came when Hugo arrived, a bit late and positively glowing. She and Caden glanced at each other quickly and then looked away. Lily beckoned Hugo over to her. His feet dragged reluctantly as he approached. He braced himself for teasing about Aster.

“You’re in luck,” Lily greeted him. “Nobody’s allowed to talk about sex. But I’ll get you tonight. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“YOU SAID IT! YOU SAID IT—I HEARD IT!” Lucy cried. She pointed down at Lily. “Lily said it! She said _you know_! Ten galleons!”

Lily spun around to face her cousin, outraged. “No! No way! I was explaining the rules to Hugo! Act your age, Lucy!”

“You still said it!”

“That doesn’t matter, you—”

“Lily,” her Uncle Percy interrupted. “You _did_ say the word.”

“Yeah, but she was just explaining the rules, wasn’t she?” Uncle Ron shot back. “Hugo hasn’t heard yet. She shouldn’t have to pay for that, that’s not right!”

“Actually, if we’re going _strictly by the book_ , yes, she should have to,” Uncle Percy persisted.

“No,” Lily’s dad chimed in, taking Uncle Ron (and Lily’s side), “that should be a free pass.”

“Oh, everything’s always a free pass for _darling Lily_ , isn’t it?” Lucy said, annoyed.

Lily felt Caden’s hand settle on her thigh. She looked over at him. She could see irritation shining in his eyes, too.

“Fancy a walk?” he suggested casually.

Lily shot up. “Never fancied one more.”

They walked out towards the apple trees. Lily rubbed over her forehead.

“They’re already doing my head in and we’ve only just arrived,” she grumbled.

“It’ll get better once the wine’s brought out,” he reminded her. “You say this every year.”

“Oh, no, who’s that up there?” Lily demanded. She spotted people already grouped around the tallest apple tree. A blond head, a red… “Is that my mum and Draco?”

“Yeah, I think so. And Evra and Remus in the tree, by the looks of it.”

By the time they reached the gathering, Evra and Remus had made it to the very top of the tree.

“Remus brings out her inner-Gryffindor,” Lily greeted her mum.

Her mum turned and smiled at them. “Yeah, I think so, too. You look angry—your cheeks are all splotchy. Are you fighting with Al?”

Lily reached up and felt her own cheeks. They were hot to the touch. “No—Lucy and Uncle Percy.”

“Ah. I got into an argument with my mum.”

Lily knocked hips with her mum. “We’re outlaws.”

“DRACO!” Remus cried. “WATCH THIS!”

“What a great job climbing that—oh, no. No, Remus, don’t!” Draco lunged to the other side of the tree; he barely managed to catch Remus before he crashed to the ground. Remus had the air knocked from him and subsequently burst into terrified tears. Draco hesitantly patted his back.

“What’s this about?” Lily hissed to her mum.

“Remus has decided that Draco’s his new best mate. It all started when Draco gave him this interactive wolf puzzle that turns three-dimensional and howls at the moon once completed…Remus is a bit obsessed with it. He and Evra talked Draco into watching them outside so they could come climb the trees. I came to assist.”

“Ah,” Lily said. They watched as Draco helped Remus climb back up into the tree, his tears entirely forgotten. “Scorpius and Albus need to have a baby already. I think Draco’s got baby fever, too.”

Ginny snorted. “Yeah, I think you’re probably right. And they’re getting there. Albus and Scorpius, I mean.”

“Yeah?” Lily asked, surprised. “Who’s the daddy?”

“More a question of who’s the mummy. It’s complicated.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lily nodded. “It’s a shame Albus can’t just have my uterus.”

“Something tells me that wouldn’t work out too well, Lulu,” her mum said. “And you never know. You might want your uterus one day. Mind you, if you wanted to send a few eggs their way, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

Lily burst into laughter. She leaned against Caden as she laughed. “Oh, Merlin. You’re funny, Mum. What would they do with an egg?! They haven’t got wombs and I’m not shagging Scorpius or carrying a baby! My vagina is _not_ up for—”

Her mum held a hand out expectantly. Lily gaped.

“No! No, that’s not fair! I didn’t say a word about…S-E-X!! I was talking about a body part!!”

Her mum arched an eyebrow.

“I’m _not_ paying for that! I was talking about childbirth!” Lily persisted.

Her mum gave her a skeptical look, but she let it go. 

“I was kidding, anyway. About the eggs,” her mum said.

Lily furrowed her brow. “Obviously you were. Can you stop saying ‘eggs’? It really disgusts me.”

“You’ve got thousands and thousands inside of you right now, you know.”

Lily slapped her hands over her ears. “SORRY, CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Ginny turned to Caden a few moments later. He’d been suspiciously quiet their entire conversation. Her mum smiled.   

“Oh, you’re wearing your new jacket, I just noticed! Good, I was worried you wouldn’t like it! You do, don’t you? Like it?”

“I _love_ it,” he corrected warmly. Lily couldn’t help but smile as Ginny pulled him into a hug.

* * *

 

Uncle Charlie arrived by dinner time, which made the entire gathering much more enjoyable for Lily. She sat beside him at dinner and listened as he updated her on all the dragons she’d left behind. He’d stayed back in New Zealand to help deal with everything after she’d left, something that meant more to Lily than every Christmas gift she’d ever gotten.

“Emerald is doing very well, all things considered,” Uncle Charlie told her. Lily sighed heavily in relief. “She nearly burnt Ivan’s face off a few times, but she let me handle her all right.”

“And Opal?” Lily asked. She hadn’t eaten a bite of her dinner yet, too concerned about her dragon to eat just yet. “How’s Opal?”

Uncle Charlie grabbed her empty wine glass and refilled it with a tap of his wand. Not a good sign.

“Mourning. He wouldn’t eat for a few days. I think he thinks you died, too. I think he could smell it when he went into where it’d happened…could smell that you’d been burnt so badly, I mean. He keeps sleeping on the roof of your work hut. I think he’s a bit confused.”

Lily took her wine glass from Charlie. She drained a third of it and tried to ignore the way her eyes were burning.

“I need to go back to him.”

“No, you need to heal. That’s what’s most important,” Uncle Charlie said. “It won’t do him any good if you come back when you’re still upset; he’ll sense it and it’ll upset him, too. He’ll be all right. He’s eating again. He’s being watched after.”

Lily took another sip. “He’s getting his batch of eyesight potion regularly? Remember to always give it to him at night, because the light will hurt his eyes the first ten minutes or so after he takes it, and I don’t want him to hurt.”

“We’re following your instructions to the letter. It took a few days to get him to take it, but we figured it out.”

“Emerald’s not bullying him much?”

“No more than usual. I don’t know how you got those two to mate so many times—even during the mating season. They’re at each other’s throats half the time.”

Lily laughed. Her chest filled with affection as she thought about the pair. “They put up a good front, but they’re actually quite fond of each other.”

“You’re their handler so I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

Lily drank wine until her head felt woozy and she couldn’t feel the sting of missing Opal. She ate her dinner and then disappeared out into the cold night while the dessert was brought out. She wasn’t alone.

“Hey,” she said, surprised. She walked over and sank down onto the grass beside Scorpius. “What are you doing out here alone?”

Scorpius smiled down at her. “Thinking. You?”

“Thinking,” she agreed. “Is it all right to think with you?”

“I’d be grateful for the company!” he smiled.

Lily wrapped her arms around her legs and peered up at the stars. She thought about Opal and her dragons. She felt so odd; there was a part of her that wanted to jump on a Muggle airplane right this moment and go back to them, to her life in New Zealand. But there was another part of her that felt sick at the idea of leaving home again (and leaving Caden). She wanted both lives. She wasn’t sure how to achieve that.

“Lily?”

Lily looked back at her brother. “Scorpius?”

He parted his lips, he but seemed to choke on the words.

“Er…nothing. Sorry. Just…thinking. About…the stars. Life. Stuff. Things.”

Lily furrowed her brow. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, great,” he said. His voice was a few octaves too high.

“Did Albus do something? Is he trying to give you handjobs under the table again? I didn’t spike his drink this time, I swear.”

“No! No, nothing like that!” Scorpius assured her. He nervously yanked up blades of dry grass. “I…well. I was talking with Nora and…she offered something…huge, something I could never ask of somebody, and…I don’t want to talk to Albus about it yet. And I know if I see him, I’ll end up telling him.”

Lily considered that. She wrinkled her nose a second later. “She didn’t offer to shag you and have your baby, did she? Because that seems wrong. Incestuous. Plus, you know…cheating.”

Scorpius looked horrified. “No! _No_! I would never cheat on Albus! Especially not with my sister!”

“Yeah, I’d hope not,” Lily said, disturbed. She furrowed her brow. “What could she have offered, then? You don’t need money. Not a threesome?”

“No! Lily, this has nothing to do with…” he trailed off. He frowned. “Oh, Lily, I think you have to pay ten galleons now.”

Lily ignored him. “What did she offer?”

He yanked up an entire fistful of grass now. “She was a bit tipsy. She probably didn’t mean what she said. And it’s probably my fault. I was getting upset, I was in one of my moods, thinking about how unfair it is that this is so difficult for Albus and I…and I don’t know, I never even _considered_ asking her something like that, she just…she’s been very emotional about all of this, too…her kids are so important to her, I think it’s really difficult for her to imagine what it’d be like for people who _can’t_ have them…”

Lily was frustrated. “So she did offer to have a baby for you. Blimey, how’s that going to work?” She mulled it over. “Oh! Turkey baster?”

“Lily! No! Ten more galleons!”

“No!!”

Scorpius sighed. He buried his face in his hands. Lily didn’t understand why he seemed so upset—if she’d really meant that, that was a good thing, right?

“I feel so guilty. I could never ask that of somebody. What if she thought that’s why I was talking to her about it? That wasn’t why. It never crossed my mind. I just wanted to talk to her because I knew she’d understand.”

“I’m still stuck on how that would happen, honestly,” Lily admitted. “If you’re not going to shag her…and there’s no _way_ she’d give up her and James’s baby…I’m not following you here, brother.”

“It wouldn’t be her and James’s. It wouldn’t even be hers. She said she didn’t think she could bear to carry and birth her own biological child and give it away. But there’s a way—a Muggle way—” Scorpius hiccupped suddenly. _Oh_ , Lily realized. He must’ve actually had some wine tonight. It never did him well. “You can have a woman carry a baby that’s somebody else’s…Muggle surgery things, but I think I can come up with a better magical alternative, I’ve been working on it…so biologically it’d be my baby—that’s what Albus wants though I’m not clear on why—and somebody else’s. Oh, she’s mad. I couldn’t let her do that.”

Lily shrugged. “If she wants to, why not? She loves being pregnant. She gets all glowy and happy. She’s got a great maternity wardrobe, too. A lot of pieces from Aster’s maternity line. Very cute.”

Unexpectedly, Scorpius began crying. Lily looked at him in horror.

“What’s wrong?!”

“I-I don’t want her to think I was u-using her!” he wept. “I just l-like talking to her!”

“Blimey, how much wine did you drink?! Come here, for Merlin’s sake…”

Lily opened her arms; Scorpius fell into her embrace. She patted his light hair. He had tears clinging to his white eyelashes. Lily sighed.

“Scorpius, nobody would _ever_ think that you were using them. And nobody can make Nora do anything. She wouldn’t offer if it wasn’t genuine. She loves you and Albus. She probably just wants to help. And for whatever fucking reason, she thinks having babies is the best thing in the world. She probably wants you and Albus to join her and James’s creepy parenting cult, so you and Al can join in with them and Vic and Teddy and do their weird parenting things…Mum and Baby Yoga and Dad and Baby Winemaking or whatever the fuck it is that they’re always doing in Muggle London—”

“I c-can’t steal somebody’s baby!” he cried.

“Then tell her no! If you feel so badly about it, obviously it’s not a good idea. But it wouldn’t really be her baby, right? Still not very clear on this but that’s what you said.”

“Not genetically but if she carried it for nine entire months…!”

“It’s like nine months of babysitting,” Lily shrugged. “Offer them nine free months of babysitting in return.”

He cried even harder. Lily patted his back. It was clear to her that she wasn’t the best person to fully appreciate the emotional complexities of this issue. That or Scorpius was insanely pissed and was now emoting on a level no sane human could ever hope to match.  

“Shall I go get Albus?” she cooed, for a lack of knowing what else to do.

“Y-yes! No! Yes! No!” He sniffed. Lily hoped he wasn’t getting snot on her dress. “W-what if James is right and we find racist eggs?!”

“…What the hell are you talking about, Scorpius? And please don’t say that word.”

“R-Racist?”

“Eggs.”

“Oh,” he sniffed.

Lily patted his back again. “Why don’t you explain it to me again, slowly, okay? Like you’re teaching me.”

Like she’d expected, giving a lecture made Scorpius feel better. By the end of it, he’d stopped crying and was facing Lily. Lily was a bit grossed out by the concepts, but she found it interesting enough.

“Oh, okay, I get it,” she said, once he finished. “They use needles, get out eggs from a donor, mix the eggs with your sperm, make an embryo, and then put that embryo in the carrying mother to implant. Good lecture.”

Scorpius gave her a watery smile. Lily heaved another sigh.

“I think you’re mad, you know. What do you want a baby for? They scream and shit everywhere.”

Scorpius wiped at his eyes. “Because I would love it so much. Albus and our little baby. Our family. I don’t have much blood-related family. I could be such a great dad. I could do a great job.”

Lily patted his hand. “You need to go talk to Albus and drink some water, okay? It’s all okay. It really is. Talk to him about it, and if you still feel like it’s something you could never ask of somebody, just tell Nora ‘thanks, but no thanks, I think you’re mad, I don’t know why you enjoy birthing babies, it’s insane, I feel bad for your—’”

“L-lady parts,” Scorpius supplied politely.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Sure. ‘Lady parts’.”

She thought she might’ve understood what emotion drove Nora to offer what she did, because as she looked at Scorpius wiping tears off his face, she just wanted him to be happy, smiley Scorpius again. As she was considering what she could do to help, her mum’s joking words from earlier floated back into her mind.

“You know, if you want, you can borrow an egg or two of mine. I’m not afraid of needles and I’m not going to miss a couple…apparently, I’ve got thousands hiding away in me, isn’t that _disturbing_? Any child with my genes would be incredible. And anyway, it’s _got_ to be better than a stranger’s, ‘cause you know me, and I’m family, and I love you and I love Al.” Lily considered the implications of what she was offering. She realized she quite liked the idea of a mini-Lily in the family—especially one she didn’t have to birth or take care of full-time. She’d only have to be the cool aunt, and she was great at being the cool aunt. And she had often felt that the only downside to her decision to remain childless was that she’d never get to pass her genes along…this way, she still could, but without the nappies or late night feedings. “I reckon we’d be best mates, me and your kid. They’d have _great_ hair. And probably a natural knack for dragon rearing. Yeah. Yeah, if you want, you can have one.”  

It was the wrong thing to say.

Scorpius collapsed back into her arms and cried even harder, as if entirely overwhelmed by her generosity.

“Oh bollocks,” Lily sighed. She looked up at the stars as she patted his back again.

* * *

 

Lily was glad strength training was a requirement for entering the dragonology field. Her strength came in handy as she half-carried, half-dragged Scorpius into the Burrow. She ignored her nieces, nephews, and cousins and made a beeline for the back sofa, where Albus and Draco were laughing with Rose, Iset, and Hermione. Lily yanked Scorpius over and brushed her hair back from her face. She huffed.

“Here, take your husband,” she greeted Albus. She gently pushed Scorpius over on top of him. Albus received him with a horrified expression. He took Scorpius’s face in his hands at once, his fingers brushing the tears from his face.

“Scorpius, what happened?!” Albus looked at Lily next. “What the hell did you do?!”

“Me?! I didn’t do anything! He was outside and just started sobbing! All because Nora—being Nora— said she’d birth your stupid, sodding baby for you guys! And then _I—_ being the kind person that I am, Albus—said he could have one of my eggs if he wanted, and he just lost it! I’ve tried everything. I’m tired and I’ve got snot on my dress now.” Lily looked around impatiently as the group fell into confused whispers. “Where the hell is my boyfriend?”

“Language, Lily!” Aunt Hermione scolded.

Lily ignored her. She squinted. She needed to get to her bag; her eyesight potion was wearing off early, as it tended to do when she drank. She peered at every blurring human shape in the room. Red hair, black hair, red hair, black hair, blond hair, red hair…sandy hair. She smiled.

“Just to be sure before I go over there and kiss him—that _is_ Caden right there, right?” Lily hissed to Iset, her finger pointed at the sandy haired blob. "Sometimes Teddy has that shade of hair." 

“Yes, that’s Caden. Do you need me to get your glasses?” Iset whispered back.

“No, no…I can find my way. Thanks. And whatever you do: _don’t_ offer Scorpius anything right now, not even a drink…he’s gone mental.”

It was too late to give that advice to Draco. He had apparently offered Scorpius a glass of water. Scorpius was alternating between sipping it and blubbering about how much he loved his dad. Lily walked off shaking her head, wondering what Albus was _thinking_ when he let Scorpius drink that much wine. They never learned.

She fell down into Caden’s lap and looped her arms around his neck. She leaned her head against his shoulder and smiled as his hand rubbed her lower back.

“What have you been up to?” Lily asked. “Not talking about S-E-X, I hope. We need to win that money so we can buy our parrot.”

“No—James and I have been talking about _babies_. Squib babies, specifically.”

Lily waited. When he didn’t elaborate automatically, she prodded his neck to get him to continue.

“We’ve spent the past hour trying to come up with programs to get pureblood families to stop abandoning their infants that don’t pass the Magical Indication Screenings…so far, nothing.”

“Ah. Babies are everybody’s favorite topic tonight.”

She felt his breath against her ear as he leaned in.

“How much money has your naughty mouth cost you tonight?” he asked quietly.

“None! I’ve been very good. Or, well…crafty.”

“Wow. Let’s see if you can keep that up.”

She couldn’t. She made it two more hours and two more glasses of wine before making a sly comment to Hugo about his ‘fun afternoon’. He personally snatched the ten galleons from her. In the end, the money they’d amassed was split between everybody but Lily, Ginny, Albus, James, and Roxanne.

“I wonder what this says about my family,” Harry commented.

Aunt Hermione gave him one of her ‘I have an opinion, but I’ll keep it to myself’ looks.

* * *

 

Lily ended her night sprawled across Aster and Jillian’s laps, practically numb from the amount of alcohol she’d consumed, giggling about things she probably wouldn’t even remember come morning.

“No…no…like _this_ ,” Zabini said. Lily rolled over slowly to watch as Zabini continued giving Hugo Muggle ‘fire-breathing’ lessons. Her stomach churned as she did.

“Ugh…” she groaned.

“Don’t you dare vomit on my shoes,” Jillian warned her.

Lily reached up and stuck two fingers up in response. Aster proved herself Lily’s most loyal friend—once again—by nicely petting her hair. Lily relaxed into her touch and watched as her cousin nearly caught his face on fire.

“NO, PIERCE! NO MORE FIRE-BREATHING!” Caden shouted at Zabini. “You’ve already caught my sodding chair on fire; don’t catch Hugo on fire, too, for fuck’s sake!”

Saul wrestled the lighter from Zabini. Lily felt herself slipping off to sleep, comforted by Aster’s hand in her hair and Jillian’s lavender perfume. She vaguely heard Caden putting an end to the party after Avery and Saul got into a duel. When she roused a short time later, everybody was gone. She hiccupped painfully.

“Oww,” she groaned. She sat up and rubbed over her eyes. Caden was cleaning all the residual soot from the carpet in front of the fireplace; she guessed the last person had only just gone. “Was it a good party? I don’t remember.”

Caden turned. He smiled at her; Lily felt her stomach do a flip at the sight of it.

“You’re handsome,” she said, before he had the chance to reply.

He walked over and joined her on the sofa. He lifted her legs and set them in his lap. Lily scooted back so the arm of the sofa was propping her up. She yawned deeply.

“Well? Was it a good party?” she pressed.

“Yeah. Though the alphabet drinking game was a horrible idea, so thanks for coming up with that,” he said.

Lily only vaguely remembered them going around in circles naming things that started with every letter of the alphabet—and taking shots when they failed to—but she thought it might’ve been fun. She had fond feelings about the memory, anyway.

“Lily,” Lily remembered. She pressed her foot against his stomach and rubbed it, giggling all the while. “You kept saying ‘Lily’ for L. We weren’t supposed to do proper nouns.”

“And I stand by what I told Claire: it’s not a proper noun exclusively, it’s also a flower,” he said stubbornly. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“Light. Lemon. Leg.”

“Oh, shut it,” Caden said with a grin. He rolled his eyes. Lily let her head fall back against the arm rest. Her eyes naturally landed on what she’d given Caden for Christmas, sitting atop the fireplace mantel: an ornate gold frame, and inside of it, hovering at various heights and ranging in size, gemstones native to every place they shared a special memory. Her eyes landed on a rough piece of topaz, collected very near Hogwarts (or so her collector had sworn). She reminisced on some of her favorite memories with him from their Hogwarts days.

“Do you really like it?” she asked a little while later. She nodded towards the mantel.

Caden arched an eyebrow. “Fishing for compliments, are we? You know I do.”

“I’m not! I just want to make sure you like it. Because I really like my gift.” Lily reached up and touched her necklace. Caden didn’t miss it. His smile was sleepy and sentimental. Lily didn’t know if she moved forward first or if he did, but a moment later she’d moved over to sit in his lap. She curled up and nuzzled his neck. His hand played with the ends of her short hair.

“I love it,” he promised her. “I wouldn’t lie.”

“Topaz is for Hogwarts.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. “I know. You told me what all of them are for.”

“I didn’t tell you everything,” she persisted. She sat up and glanced towards the frame again. She eyed the long piece of nephrite jade hovering beside the topaz. “Do you remember what I told you about the jade?”

“It’s for the first time I visited you in New Zealand. After we’d been apart for three months,” he answered at once.

“Right,” Lily said. She kissed the side of his neck. She reached up and brushed her fingers along his hairline. “We shagged in the pub toilets.”

“Not one of our more romantic or sanitary moments.”

Lily could remember, even now, the maddening desperation and affection she’d felt the moment they hugged at the portkey location. It was a miracle they’d made it to the pub.

“And then we went back to the reserve I was working at and I showed you all my dragons. You got to meet Opal properly for the first time. And afterwards, when we went back to my flat and ate dinner in bed…I remember looking over at you and realizing that it was the first time my flat had _ever_ felt like home. I knew I loved you then.”

He gently pulled her back so he could examine her face. Where she thought she’d feel panicked vulnerability, she only felt love.

“That’s really what that one stands for,” she finished. She shrugged, as if she hadn’t said anything particularly noteworthy. “In case you were wondering.”

His large hands moved up to cup her face. Lily smiled tiredly and fell easily into his eyes.

“I’ll never wonder again,” he muttered, and when he finally kissed her, she felt invincible.


	8. I. Honeybees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Nora discuss the possibility of surrogacy. The Potter children are acting wilder than usual. Finnigan's unimpressed with his family's diet. And Lily's found a new way to communicate.

From the second James jerked awake, he had the feeling that something was wrong.

He sat straight up, his heart pounding, torn with jarring finality from his dreams. His knees were bent at an odd angle and his feet pressed against the frigid iron of the bedframe. The source of his uneasiness quickly became apparent as he registered trembling, frightened sobs. He could tell at once that it was Henry; he knew each of their cries by heart.

“Henry?” James said, panicked. He glanced around himself, a bit disoriented and confused. He realized he’d fallen asleep while reading Evra bedtime stories, almost certainly thanks to all the wine he’d had during Christmas dinner. Evra was fast asleep at his side, lying atop the duvet, still in her party dress and tights. The books James had been reading to her before they’d both passed out were scattered all over the bed between them, but there was no Henry. “Henry?!”

“D-Daddy!” Henry wailed.

This time, James could tell where it was coming from. He scooted over to the edge of Evra’s bed and looked down; Henry was lying on the carpet, curled up beneath the massive stuffed dragon Lily gave him for Christmas. It was as big as Henry was. James leaned over and lifted the dragon up to reveal his son. His face was soaked with tears, his eyes swimming. James hooked his hands beneath his son’s armpits and hoisted him up onto the bed. His heart was pounding so hard in his concern that he felt a bit sick.

“Henry,” James said, horrified. He held Henry tightly in his arms, but Henry’s tears continued. James rubbed his back and kissed the top of his head. “Henry, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you in bed?”

Henry and Finnigan had both fallen asleep in the car on the way back home. James had tucked them up in their beds; they’d been sleeping like the dead. What time was it? Where was Nora? James guessed she’d also been missing from their bed, because Henry would’ve gone there first thing; he often climbed into bed with them in the middle of the night. And if Henry had entered their bedroom after a nightmare only to find it empty…well, that explained his traumatized state.

“I-I-I want mama and daddy!” Henry gasped.

“I’m right here. It’s okay, love. Did you wake up and you couldn’t find us?”

“Y-Yes!”

“And you can’t get up on Evra’s bed all by yourself, can you?”

Henry only cried harder, and James felt like crying with him. The thought of his little boy roaming the halls, crying, unable to find his parents…James felt sick. He rocked him gently in his arms and continued rubbing soothing circles into his back. Gradually, Henry calmed down. His sobs gave way to tired yawns. He gripped James tightly and sniffled into his shoulder.

“S-she yell at me,” Henry said. “Walla!”

James gently pulled Henry back. He wiped at his tears and frowned. “Walburga’s portrait?”

Henry nodded. The moonlight flooding in from between the parted curtains illuminated the tear paths on his face. James lifted the hem of his shirt to dry his son’s face. He wiped his nose afterwards, entirely indifferent to the state of his shirt. He just wanted his son to be comfortable and happy again.

“Was she yelling at you for crying?” James pressed gently.

Henry nodded, his lip trembling. His eyes shone brightly behind an oncoming round of tears. James felt anger lurking in his heart, but at the present time, he was too worried about his son to indulge it.

“I bet Mummy’s in her studio with Delilah,” James told Henry softly. Delilah had been fussy all night long, probably thanks to Uncle George, Roxanne, and Fred. James had put her down around seven in his mum’s old bedroom at the Burrow, in the travel cot they always took with them, and the Weasleys had rudely woken her only two hours later with some impromptu fireworks right outside the window. Delilah was a nightmare to get back to sleep after being woken up. Nora often retreated to her attic studio on nights when Delilah was like that, to try and keep her from waking the other kids; she’d probably assumed James was in their bed. He had certainly meant to be. “Shall we go find her?”

Henry smiled. It brightened his precious face magnificently. James leaned in and kissed his little nose. “C’mon, let’s find Mummy.”

“Find Mummy,” Henry nodded.

James carefully gathered the books from the middle of Evra’s bed and piled them atop her bedside table (so she wouldn’t roll over on them and get poked by the corners) and then he stood from the bed, Henry still in his arms. He carried him towards the stairs with the intention of ascending them but hesitated. He thought to his son’s trembling lips, how scared he’d looked. He turned and headed downstairs instead, his anger and sadness swelling up his throat. He stopped in front of the cheerful curtains covering the portrait of Sirius Black’s mother. He drew them back and waited until the woman inside opened her eyes to look at him.

“He’s stop shrieking, then, has he?” she wheezed.

James held Henry tighter. He lowered his voice.

“Let me make myself very plain, Walburga,” he began. He heard his own voice wavering with emotion. “Do you remember what I told you when Nora and I first moved in here?”

Walburga pursed her lips. She didn’t respond.

“You can continue living happily in peace with my family or you can revert to your nasty old ways. And if you choose to do that, I will make good on the promise I made to you that night. If you  _ever_ — _EVER_ — yell at my children again—especially when they’re upset—I swear you’ll regret it.”

Walburga held James’s gaze. He squared his jaw and didn’t look away even for a second, so Walburga would know he meant business. After a moment, she nodded.

“It was annoying is all,” she mumbled.

“Then ask him politely to give you some space. Goodnight.”

James drew the curtains shut again. He felt Henry’s eyes on him. He glanced down as they headed back up the stairs.

“You ang-y?” Henry asked. He was looking at James in surprise, as if he hadn’t known his dad could exhibit that emotion so strongly. James wished he hadn’t had to show it in front of his son. He leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

“Not at you. Never at you,” he promised. He tossed Henry up in the air suddenly, catching him off guard. Giggles tumbled from his mouth as soon as James caught him again. “You’re my whole heart.”

“Again!”

James gently tossed Henry up into the air the entire walk up to the attic, so that by the time he was outside of the closed studio door, he was a bit winded.

“Phew…no more sweets for Daddy, remind me, yeah?” he asked Henry. Henry nodded seriously. It was silent outside of the studio door, but that didn’t mean much; they’d placed a permanent silencing spell on the room ages ago. Sure enough, once James pushed the door open, it was like puncturing a seal; noise flooded out of the room towards them. Delilah’s raucous giggles and babbles, Finnigan’s nonstop chatter, one of the records James had gotten Nora for Christmas playing away in the background, the faint sound of brushstrokes. Everybody sounded so awake that, for a moment, James was convinced it was morning. But the darkness shining outside of the small attic windows reminded him of the proper time. James stepped inside and took in Finnigan and Delilah rolling around on the colorful, plush rug covering the white wooden floors. Finnigan was rolling Delilah up and down the rug, something she was finding exceedingly hilarious. Nora’s old cat Olive was standing sentry from atop the settee, her eyes fixed on the kids, watching carefully as Delilah was rolled from one end of the rug to the next; she wouldn’t hesitate to intervene the moment she thought something was wrong. Nora was at her worn wooden work table, her elbow on the surface just beside a palette of paint and her chin resting tiredly in her hand. The piece she’d only just started was nearly completed. Padfoot was curled up underneath her feet, snoozing quite peacefully in the chaos. James was even more baffled.

“Nora?” he greeted. He set Henry down; Henry made a beeline for his siblings. “What are Finnigan and Delilah doing up?”

“Tormenting me, I think,” she said. She glanced back to look at him. Her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. James walked over and sat on the stool beside hers; he drew her into his embrace and kissed her lips.

“What are you doing awake?” she asked, once he’d pulled back from their kiss.

“Henry woke me. I accidentally fell asleep in Evra’s bed while reading to her—all the wine, I knew I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t let  _Scorpius_ outdrink me; Albus would never let me live it down. Henry woke and couldn’t find us in our room. He panicked.”

Nora’s face fell. “Oh, no. I thought you were in our room. I never would’ve brought them up here had I known Henry wouldn’t know where to find you. I didn’t want them to wake Evra and Henry. Delilah’s been a proper pain—I let her lie in our bed, I even nursed her to sleep even though she’d  _just_  had a bottle on the car ride— thinking that would definitely do the trick; she’s such a piglet—and  _still_  she woke me about two hours later by blowing raspberries in my face.”

James pursed his lips. He snorted as he tried to withhold the building laughter. Nora laughed along with him when the laughter finally broke free. Despite her exhaustion, he knew she still appreciated how adorable Delilah’s newfound skill—blowing raspberries—was.

“Finnigan woke only a few minutes after her. He walked into the room, hopped up on the bed, and asked me to make him bacon,” she continued.

“What has gotten into them?” James demanded. He glanced at her paint-splattered wristwatch. “It’s three in the morning!”  

“I have a feeling your gran stuffed them full of sugar while we weren’t looking…well, her and everybody else. I know for a  _fact_ that Lily lets Finnigan eat whatever he likes. I caught him hiding beneath Albus’s old bed in the Den absolutely cramming a slice of cake down his throat. He told me ‘Auntie Lulu said yes’.”

James sighed, annoyed. “She only lets him because she doesn’t have to deal with  _this_.”

He pointed at the rug, where Finnigan and Henry were now rolling around together. Olive had landed on the rug beside Delilah; James knew from experience that she’d scratch the boys if they rolled too close to the baby, so he quickly stood to intervene.

“Boys, that’s enough,” he told them. They separated at once. Delilah waved her chubby arms at the sight of James, demanding to be picked up. He felt his chest nearly explode with affection. He lifted her up into his arms and pressed nearly a dozen kisses to her face, smiling as she exploded into giggles. “I hear you’ve been a little monster for Mummy.”

She rested her cheek against his shoulder and babbled happily. It sounded suspiciously proud. James kissed the top of her head and started back over to Nora. Henry beat him to it; he was already climbing up into his mum’s lap by the time James sat back down in his seat.

“Oh, darling,” Nora cooed to Henry. She kissed his little hands and hugged him tightly. “Were you so frightened?”

Henry had almost certainly gotten over it, but at that, he nodded sagely, his eyes wide.

“I’m so sorry,” Nora told him. Henry giggled as she leaned forward and dabbed her paintbrush on the tip of Henry’s nose, leaving a midnight blue dot behind.

“I WANT ONE! Paint me! Oh,  _please_ , Mummy,  _please_?!” Finnigan requested. He sped over to them and lay across Nora’s lap (and Henry’s legs). James watched on fondly as Nora drew a midnight blue swirl on Finnigan’s cheek, much to Finnigan’s joy. Delilah was watching with rapt attention when James glanced down at her. He stole a paintbrush from Nora’s paintbrush jar; Delilah shrieked happily as he tickled her cheek with it.

“Pink now!” Finnigan requested. He tapped at his other cheek. Nora leaned over and kissed the spot he’d indicated instead. His eyes were full of love when she leaned back up.

“No more paint on your skin, but you two can paint if you like.  _One_ picture. Then you’re having a nap before breakfast and a very early bedtime tomorrow.”

They were both a bit too young to really comprehend that trade-off, so when they heard they’d get to paint  _right then_ , that was the most important thing to them. An earlier future bedtime was inconsequential. James helped set them up with a canvas and paint, settled Delilah in the bouncy seat they’d hung from the low ceiling rafters, and then he and Nora retreated to the settee. James collapsed down on it and opened his arms, waiting; Nora stretched out beside him and pressed her face into his shirt. James struggled to stay awake as he stroked her hip and listened to their children giggling. The smooth silk of her dressing gown calmed him…the scent of paint was so comforting that he couldn’t help but yawn. He felt Nora slip off to sleep almost immediately. She was quite skilled at taking effective cat naps. James, on the other hand, typically needed eight straight hours if he was going to sleep at all; he often went entire days without sleep when they first brought their babies home.

“Daddy! Daddy, I’m done! Daddy, look!”

He felt Finnigan climb up on top of him and Nora. She gave a tiny start and pulled herself from her short-lived dreams. James yawned again and sat up with some reluctance.

“Let’s see your painting!” James said. He was surprised at the amount of enthusiasm he’d managed to flood his voice with. Finnigan bounced over to the work table, James at his heels. James leaned over and stared at his painting. He smiled. It looked like an explosion of multi-colored autumn leaves.

“That’s very nice, Finnigan. We’ll hang that right above the stairs,” he said.

He heard Nora’s footsteps as she came up to stand behind him. She rested her chin on his shoulder and peered down at their son’s painting.

“ _Finnigan_ ,” she gushed, her voice full of pride. “That’s absolutely  _exquisite_!”

Finnigan squirmed happily in his seat. He pressed his hands to his cheeks and beamed.

“Dada! Daddy!” Henry said, a tone of jealousy in his voice. He quickly stabbed his paintbrush down a final time and pushed his canvas over towards James. James eyed the messy explosion of blues and purples. He smiled.

“Another beautiful job! This will look great right beside Finnigan’s! You lot are so talented…my special boys!” James scooped Henry up into his arms and kissed his paint-smeared cheeks. Henry kissed James’s cheeks right back afterwards, smiling all the while. Nora pulled Henry from James a moment later and lifted him into the air; he shrieked with laughter as she blew a raspberry against his tummy and then hugged him close. James heard her murmuring about his ‘ _excellent sense of color’_ as she rubbed his back. He smiled.

He turned his attention to Delilah as the boys helped Nora clean up the paints. She’d been bouncing for a while and  _finally_ seemed ready to drop. James lifted her from the bouncy seat and cradled her in his arms. He’d only just kissed her forehead when her eyelids drifted shut. He held his breath and didn’t move for at least three minutes, watching closely to make sure she was  _really_ asleep before he started walking.

“Mama!” Henry yelled. James heard the water at the sink turn off. “All done!!”

“Let’s see…oh, good job, my loves! The paintbrushes look brand new! Let’s set them here to dry and— oh, Jamie, is she sleeping?”

James turned around to face Nora. He nodded and resisted the urge to punch his fist into the air in victory.

Nora lowered her voice at once. She kneeled down so she was facing their sons.

“Okay, boys, let’s go downstairs for your nap, okay? Be very quiet, quiet as little baby mice…”

“Quiet mice,” Henry repeated seriously. He stepped down from the stepstool in front of the sink and hunched over. He crept slowly towards the door with exaggerated sneakiness. “Quiet mice…shhh…”

James felt laughter building. He had to bite his tongue to keep from snorting, and even then it was difficult. Nora seemed equally amused. She pressed her fingers to her lips for a moment and avoided looking in James’s direction. They surely would’ve fallen into giggles if they met eyes.

“Right, good job, little mouse,” Nora praised instead.

“I’ll be the  _cat_ ,” Finnigan said wickedly. He dropped down to all fours and shot after Henry, who immediately scampered towards the stairs. Nora quickly bolted after them so Henry didn’t end up rolling down the stairs in his haste to avoid the ‘cat’.

James waited until he was certain they’d had time to make it to the boys’ bedrooms and then he set off down the stairs. Delilah was sleeping so deeply that her breaths were even and slow. For a moment after James settled her down into her cot, he wondered if he might actually be looking at an angel. He leaned over the edge of the cot and stared down at her in affectionate wonder (a wonder that never seemed to fade—he still caught himself looking at Evra that same way when he checked in on her during the night). Delilah was absolutely adorable, without a doubt, with her dark ringlets, her deep dimples, her pouty lips, her tiny nose. But it was more than that, too. She had that same brightness about her that all his children did. To James, she was a source of joy itself, a genuine gift to the world. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for her; his children really were his entire heart, the entire purpose of his life. If somebody asked him why he was put on Earth, he would’ve answered with their names. Even imagining life without them was indescribably insufferable. 

He resisted the urge to kiss her goodnight—for fear of waking her—and quietly left her nursery. He peeked in on the rest of his kids on his way back to his own bed: Evra was still snoozing atop her duvet (he gently settled a blanket atop her before moving on to check on the boys) and Finnigan and Henry were curled up together in Finnigan’s bed. Padfoot jumped down from the foot of Finnigan’s bed and walked out to meet James. James patted his head as they walked together towards his and Nora’s room.

“Good boy,” he told Padfoot, as Padfoot immediately trotted over and jumped up onto the sofa. James stripped his trousers and top off, yawned as he scratched Padfoot behind his velvety ears, and then he climbed the small staircase to their bed, sitting slightly elevated from the rest of the room. Nora was already underneath the white duvet, but James could tell she wasn’t yet asleep. Sure enough, once he’d joined her beneath the covers, she rolled over to face him.

“How long do you think we’ll have?” she asked sleepily.

“Three hours at the most,” he admitted. His heavy eyelids drifted shut. “It’ll be okay…we can nap at your dads’ house…they’ll watch them for us…”

“Jamie-baby?”

“Nora-bear?”

He heard the bedding rustle. When he forced his eyelids up for a few seconds, she saw she’d propped herself up on her elbow and was now looking down at him. He would’ve done the same, only he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open.

“I know you’re sleepy, but I don’t know when else I’ll get to talk to you about this...we’ll be with my dads all day and I don’t want you to hear it from somebody else.”

He felt like he could’ve slipped off to sleep in a second, but he scrounged within himself for as much energy as he could muster. He pried his eyes open. He studied his wife’s apprehensive expression. His immediate reaction was to reach forward and pull her into his arms. He didn’t like when she looked worried.

“Whatever it is, s’okay,” he told her, and he meant it. He kissed her hair and hugged her. “Did you change your mind about your gift? I can return it, honest, I don’t mind.”

“No, no, I love my gift, that’s silly,” she said. Her words were warm against his neck. “I...earlier, at the Burrow…I offered to be Albus and Scorpius’s surrogate.”

 _That_ got his attention. James felt his heart drop, more out of shock than anything else. He leaned back and met Nora’s eyes, his widened in surprise. She was frowning.

“It just sort of…well, I know we talked about it hypothetically, and I never meant to actually offer it without us having a proper conversation, but…James, they’re my family, and I can’t let a stranger do that for them. I keep thinking…what if that stranger is a bad person? And she drinks or does drugs or something and the baby dies after all that time—after they finally thought they’d be dads? I wouldn’t let a stranger watch our kids for an hour, much less carry our baby in her stomach. I wouldn’t want a stranger to do that for our niece or nephew, either. And I’m good at it. I’m very good at it—at having babies. And I do love being pregnant. And we already decided we’re adopting our next child, so it doesn’t interfere with our family planning. And I keep thinking about our babies…about what it would be like if we couldn’t have them so easily. We’re so lucky, you know? Our beautiful, healthy babies. I could help Albus and Scorpius. I could give something back to the universe. I  _want_ to help them. God…am I even making any sense? I know this isn’t the best time to talk about this.”

James wasn’t sure what to say back.

“I wish you’d talked to me first,” he admitted. He felt a bit wounded. “We always talk big things out together.”

“I know. I meant to. I’ve felt so horrible about not talking to you first. It just sort of slipped,” she confessed. He didn’t say anything for another minute. “Jamie?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about it,” he said honestly. “It’s difficult for me to imagine—you being pregnant, but it not being ours. You being pregnant, but us coming home empty-handed at the end of it.”

“I know. I told them I’d only do it if you were okay with it and if they got the eggs from a donor. I think that might make it a bit easier for us…if the baby isn’t genetically mine in any way.” There was a pause. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her voice taut with worry. “Maybe it’ll still feel like mine, even if it’s technically not. Maybe it was stupid to offer it, stupid to even consider it. I’m sorry. And if you hate the idea, I’ll just tell them that; Scorpius didn’t really look sold on the idea yet anyway.”

James felt uneasy. Every single one of his experiences with pregnancy was of Nora being pregnant with  _their_ baby,  _their_ child. A baby they got to take home at the end of it all and shower in love. A baby they would watch grow up, a child they’d have and cherish forever. Would the fact that it wasn’t  _theirs_ change the way it felt to watch her stomach swell—would they be able to compartmentalize it in the proper way? Or would they forget that it was never really theirs in the first place?

Most importantly: when it came to the end of it, would Nora feel like she’d just had a child snatched away? Would  _he_ feel like that? He thought about her other pregnancies, about the innumerable nights he’d spent with his head in her lap, singing and chatting to her growing belly, the feeling of the baby shifting beneath his hand, the wonder of the first sound of its little heartbeat, seeing it moving during the first scanning spell, finally getting to meet it after all those months of loving it from afar…holding it for the first time…

He knew, without a doubt, that they wouldn’t be able to do it if they would feel that way; the love they had for their babies was just too intense. It would absolutely destroy them to give it up. But if it wasn’t theirs…would they feel that way in the first place? Could they keep it all in perspective?

He was too tired to give it the consideration it needed, but he couldn’t go to sleep now with his wife so worried. And even though he knew this situation was almost surely going to send him into an anxious spiral tomorrow, he pulled her close again and kissed her shoulder.

“I need to think on it more when I’m less tired before I can tell you how I feel,” he said. He struggled to stay awake long enough to say the most important part. “But it’s not about me…it’s not my body. If this is really something that you feel like you need to do…of course I support it. Of course I support you. We’ll get through it. If it’s what you want, no matter how I feel, even if I don’t understand—we’ll do it together.”

“God, Jamie,” he heard her whisper, her voice wavering. She held him tighter and kissed the center of his chest. “I love you so.”

“I’d say ‘I love you, too’, but it’s not strong enough to cover how I feel,” he whispered back, his words thick with exhaustion. He was hovering on the edge of sleep, but he didn’t let himself slip over until he heard her give a tiny laugh. Once he knew she was okay, he was fast asleep.

* * *

 

In his dreams, he was seventeen again.

In his dreams, he was seventeen, and he was on his knees begging for Nora’s life.

In his dreams, he was seventeen, and he was on his knees beginning for Nora and their baby’s life.

It was panning out a lot differently than it had in the past; right after James watched Nora crumple to the ground, he felt a firm shake to his shoulders that ripped him from his anxiety-fueled nightmare. It was the sort of dream that hadn’t  _felt_ like a dream; at no point had he been consciously aware that he was dreaming. At every point he’d been hysterical. So when he blinked away and found his wife leaning nervously over him, he crushed her to his chest in a shaky, relieved hug.

“You’re shaking,” Nora mumbled, concerned.

“Nightmare. Delphi. You. Hogwarts,” he shared. He’d hoped the dream would disappear from his memory as soon as he woke, but it clung to his mind stubbornly. “She killed our baby and said we would never, ever have another one.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Nora said gently. She kissed his cheek. “But look on your other side.”

James obediently glanced over towards his side of the bed. Laughter and tears climbed up his throat in a confused tangle. All four of his kids—Evra, Finnigan, and Henry cuddled up together in the small space, and Delilah snoozing in the cot that attached to the side of the bed—had joined them while he suffered through his horrifying nightmare. He hugged his wife tighter.

“Just a nightmare,” she soothed. “They’re very much alive and in very needy moods. Evra wandered in first, then the boys, then Delilah must’ve realized somebody  _else_ was getting attention, because she started crying…they all drifted back off easily enough, though.” 

James was in the mood to indulge their neediness. He turned over and cuddled Finnigan (who was closest to him). Finnigan snuggled closer in his dreams. James took in a few deep, timed breaths, the way Scorpius taught him. He counted before he exhaled. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t. This time he thought it might’ve, but it also could’ve been his kids that were helping to dispel the residual anxiety from his dreams.

He knew one thing for certain:

“It was horrible,” he mumbled.

Nora curled up against his back. James felt his heart swell as she kissed the back of his shoulder. “It  _sounds_ horrible.”

He wondered as he drifted back off to sleep if his brother and his husband felt the gaping emptiness that James had felt in his dreams, that aching sense of a lost purpose. James didn’t think about it much—the thought that there were probably other people like him in the world, people who’d always felt like they were meant to be dads, people who hadn’t really felt  _complete_ until they’d had their children, people who felt that way but couldn’t  _have_ children—and he wondered if his brother was one of those people. He’d certainly never wish pain like that on his brother, no matter how often he annoyed him.  _And maybe_ , his mind whispered, as he drifted off to sleep,  _maybe Nora’s right. We’ve been so lucky_. I’m _so lucky—I’ve always been. Even if it would hurt like I’m scared it would…wouldn’t it be_ right  _to give some goodness back? We’ve got so much of it._

James had only just drifted off again when he felt Finnigan lean back from his embrace.

“Daddy?”

“Hmm?” James yawned.

“Will you make me some bacon?”

Nora laughed on James’s other side. “Bacon  _again_ , Finnigan? You’re really starving, aren’t you? You could eat an entire pig, I bet.”

Finnigan was quiet for a moment. “Why would I eat a little piggy?”

James glanced over his shoulder at Nora. Her face had fallen.

“Who’s going to tell him?” James asked. Nora bit her lip.

* * *

 

Finnigan was in a stormy mood.

James carried drowsy Henry down to the kitchen while Finnigan stamped his way down the steps, mumbling crossly underneath his breath with every hop.

“A  _pig_!” he raged.

He shoved the kitchen door open. Nora barely managed to catch it with her free hand before it slammed back into the wall; Delilah jumped in her arms, alarmed.

“Don’t shove doors!” Evra scolded Finnigan. “That’s how fingers get chopped right off!”

“A  _pig_!” Finnigan repeated. He jumped up in down in place beside his customary breakfast chair, his face turning alarmingly red as he “held his breath”. With his cheeks bulging, he said: “I—AM—NOT—BREATHING—AGAIN!”

With every word, air escaped, and he took a greedy mouthful. Nora and James watched him breathing (but “ _not breathing”_ ) for a long moment. James shot his wife a baffled look. Nora’s muggle cousin’s son had taught their children the ‘holding the breath’ trick (it was that kid’s signature move when things didn’t go his way), but luckily, the finer details of the method had clearly escaped Finnigan. He was mostly just nosily nose-breathing with his cheeks expanded.

“Finnigan,” Nora finally said, her tone soft and careful. She walked over and set her hands on their son’s shoulders, gently guiding him towards his seat. He hopped up in it, his cheeks still bulging like a squirrel’s. “Let’s talk over breakfast about it.”

He crossed his arms and refused to look at her.

“Merlin,” James muttered, after he’d settled the kids into their seats and joined Nora at the oven. “I wasn’t expecting that reaction.”

“How has he made it this far without questioning where meat comes from?” Nora shot back from the corner of her mouth.

“Imagine how angry he’s going to be when he realizes what beef is…‘moo’ was his second animal sound…”

Nora and James shared a grimace.

“Fruit and yogurt this morning?” she suggested nervously.

“Probably a great idea, yeah,” James whispered back.

James carried dish after dish to the table as Nora prepared it. Evra passed spoons to everybody. Finnigan shunned his typical job—passing out napkins—so Henry filled in for him. Finnigan refused to touch his breakfast and stared at them all instead, cheeks still bulging, still angrily breathing through his nose.

“Finnigan, you’ll be so hungry at Dean and Seamus’s if you don’t eat,” James reminded him.

Finnigan pointed at his yogurt. “What’s that?!  _Dog eyeballs_!?”

Nora choked on a bit of strawberry; Delilah, who had been nursing, pulled back in shock and stared at her mother with wide eyes. Evra lowered her spoon from her mouth, her cute nose scrunched up in disgust.

“It’s not,” Evra said, outraged, but there was a bit of doubt lurking in her voice. “Daddy, it's not, right?”

“Of course not, darling,” James said hurriedly. “Yogurt comes from milk.”

Finnigan stared challengingly at James. “And where does milk come from?”

James marveled at Finnigan’s ability to be so sassy—he knew very well where cow’s milk came from. He’d visited a dairy before in Ireland, during a Finnigan family visit. Henry, however, thought he knew the answer, and nearly climbed atop the table in his haste to answer. He pressed his palms to the table edge and lifted himself up from his seat excitedly.

“ _Mummy_!” Henry answered proudly.

This time, it was James who choked on a building laugh. He covered his mouth to keep from coughing up yogurt.

“Not this milk,” Evra told Henry gently. She patted his curls. “It’s a good try, though.”

“This milk comes from  _cows_ ,” Finnigan answered darkly. He pushed his yogurt away. He stared accusingly at Nora. “Stolen from  _cow babies_.”

Nora opened and closed her mouth wordlessly, unsure how to respond. Finnigan squinted his eyes at his baby sister. 

“What if farmers stole Delilah-baby milk? She’d  _die_. Dead!”

“No she wouldn’t, for one,” James said, sensing a tantrum brewing. “For two, they don’t take  _all_ the milk; the baby cows still have plenty. How much time did you spend with Auntie Lulu yesterday? Was she talking to you about poaching?”

“Don’t even talk to me about her,” Finnigan said angrily, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Finnigan!” Nora said, outraged. “Apologize to Daddy, that was a mean tone!”

Finnigan clearly hadn’t meant to be  _mean_. He frowned. He met James’s eyes; his brown eyes held so much betrayal that James’s throat narrowed.

“Sorry, Daddy,” Finnigan said.

James rose from his seat and rounded the table. He lifted Finnigan up, sat in his vacant seat, and placed him in his lap. He turned him around so they were facing each other. He tapped Finnigan’s chin.

“Why are you angry at Auntie Lulu?” James asked.

“She leaved Gran Molly’s and never even played with me.”

“Aww,” James said gently. “She—er—was busy playing with somebody else. Sometimes that happens, yeah? Sometimes when we go to the park you’re so busy playing with Lydia that you don’t have time to play with Sofia or Drew.”

“You can play with two peoples!” Finnigan argued. He held up his empty hand, his palm cupped as if he were holding something imaginary. “We didn’t eat our cake. Me and Auntie Lulu have cake on Christmas.”

James met Nora’s eyes from over Finnigan’s head.

“Your auntie gives you loads of cake, does she?” he asked lightly.

“No.” Finnigan crossed his arms again. “I’m so  _angry_!”

“It’s okay to be angry, everybody feels angry sometimes,” James told him. “But you can’t be mean to the people that love you, okay? So, look…I’ll pick out all the fruit and you can eat it all up and be done with breakfast.”

Finnigan paused, suspicious. “Where does fruit come from?”

“Trees and bushes and such. They don’t miss it, I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, have you ever interacted with a tree? Pet a tree?”

“I could,” Finnigan said stubbornly. “If I want.”

James arched an eyebrow. Finnigan relented.

“Can I have more bananas?” he requested.

“Absolutely,” James said.

He could tell the day was only going to get stranger and stranger, and it’d been very atypical already.

* * *

 

James was in the middle of a football match with his kids and Dean when Seamus shouted for him. He stopped running and squinted towards the house. He had to shield his eyes from the sun before he could make out his father-in-law, standing impatiently at the garden door.

“JAMES!” Seamus repeated.

Fearing something was wrong with Nora or Delilah, James immediately took off in a jog towards the house, leaving his sons and Evra behind with Dean. He stepped into the Thomas kitchen and doubled over, his hands on his thighs as he panted.

“Blimey, I’ve got to work out more—yes? What’s wrong, Seamus?”

“George Flooed a minute or so ago. He says he needs to speak with you at the joke shop.”

James’s heart fell. He straightened and wiped some sweat from his eyes. “What?! It’s Boxing Day! At the joke shop? I didn’t even know it was open today!”  

“He said to tell you it’s ‘urgent’.” Seamus closed the words in finger-quotes. James heaved a sigh.

“Fabulous! Does  _anybody_ care about sacred family time anymore?!” he grumbled. “Is Nora still in the sitting room?”

Seamus nodded. He clapped James on the shoulder sympathetically as he passed.

“I’m sorry,” James greeted Nora. He walked over and fell down onto the carpet with her. She and Delilah were playing with the stuffed fish they’d bought their daughter on the cruise, though Delilah really just seemed to like gnawing on them until they were nice and moist and then dropping them on people. Delilah shrieked happily as James joined them and tried to scoot towards him on her tummy, but she wasn’t quite there yet; Nora picked her up and handed her over to James.

“It’s all right,” Nora reassured him. “You’d better go see what he wants. We’ll be fine here.”

“Do you want me to take Delilah with me? So you can actually go out and play with the kids and Dean?”

“No, you’re all right,” she reassured him. “I brought the carrier, it’ll be okay. We don’t know what your uncle wants…if he’s making a new product it might not be safe for Delilah in the shop.”

James frowned. Nora leaned over Delilah and pressed her soft lips to his.

“It’s really okay,” she promised him. She rubbed the side of her nose against his; James smiled. “I’m sure it won’t take long. I’ll have the kids run laps while you’re gone…maybe we can get them to sleep early.”

The light, casual tone of her voice made heat rise to James’s face. They’d learned to mask their sexy-talk as boring-talk. Nothing made kids want to listen in more than whispered, secretive voices; they tended to tune their parents out when they talked about sex like they were talking about groceries.

“I really hope we can,” he said back, his tone just as even. “I’ve been thinking about the new nightie you bought.”

She beamed. She slid her hands from his shoulders to his biceps, rubbing gently. “Aww, yeah? You have?”

“Oh yeah.”

She reached up and cupped his face in her hand. “I’m always thinking about you, you know.”

He set his hand on her lower back and pulled her in closer. “Yeah?”

She leaned in and kissed his lips again. “ _Oh yeah_ ,” she echoed.

They were giggling like schoolchildren when Seamus stepped in.

“What? What’s happened? James, did you already make it back from the shop?” he asked, confused.

“No, no, I’m going now,” James said, his eyes still on Nora’s. Nora tapped the tip of his nose. He smiled and stood, and he  _did_ go towards the fireplace, but it was more like lovesick stumbling than walking.

“See you soon,” Nora said.  

“Won’t be soon enough,” he affirmed. He  _hated_ leaving his family on holidays.

“Wave bye-bye to Daddy!” Nora cooed to Delilah. The last thing James saw before he sped through the Floo was Delilah’s little hand waving back and forth in Nora’s.

* * *

 

The shop  _was_ closed. James knocked once on the door, baffled. When nobody came immediately, he backed up and yelled towards the windows above the shop, where Fred and Roxanne’s respective flats were.

“THIS ISN’T FUNNY! IF THIS IS A PRANK, I’LL…DO SOMETHING…VERY…NOT NICE!”

The doorbell rattled. He turned his attention back to the shop doors; his Uncle George opened them with a slightly tense looking grin in place.

“Jamie! Hello! How’s everything? Come in, come in!”

James narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He followed his uncle into the shop; Fred and Roxanne were sitting side-by-side on top of the counter. Aunt Angelina was standing behind them with her arms crossed. James looked from face to face, his heart picking up tempo. A million different horrible scenarios raced through his head.

“Oh, no,” he said. His heart plummeted. “Who died?!”

“No one…hopefully…” Fred said. Roxanne elbowed his ribs.

“So, James,” George said. He went to lean ‘casually’ against the till, but ended up slamming his elbow into the button that opened the money drawer. It flew open and punched Angelina in the stomach. She slapped his shoulder with a glare. “How have the kids been? Yours, I mean.”

James’s heart only beat faster. “Why?  _Why_ , Uncle George?”

“Just…curious, you know, wondering, from one family man to another— _ow_ , Ang!”

Angelina had smacked his head. She looked at James. “My husband poisoned your kids.”

James felt the floor shift beneath him. The blood drained from his face. “ _What_?! What do you mean!?”

“Oh, because  _that_ was a  _much_ better way of telling him,” George hissed from the corner of his mouth.

“Dad got his sweets mixed up,” Roxanne spoke up. “See, he was supposed to bring fudge cakes that are just fudge cakes, to have everybody taste the flavor. Instead, he brought his Fidgety Fudge Cakes, our new product that works like caffeine, only…way more intense.”

“Your boys were cramming them in last night,” Fred added. “Impressively, in Finnigan’s case; the little guy’s got such a tiny stomach but you wouldn’t  _believe_ his nerve with how many he’ll cram in his mouth at once…”

“What exactly is in them?! What does it do? What do I need to do? Should we go to St. Mungo’s?!” James panicked. “This explains why they were such terrors last night!” Something occurred to him. “Delilah was the same, though, and she couldn’t have eaten them…”

“No, but Nora did! Pesky thing, nursing…” he turned to Angelina. “Remember that time you accidentally drank an entire bottle of False Liquor when you were breastfeeding Roxanne and she ended up giggling so hard she sh—”

James interrupted George’s reminiscing. “What about my children?! Are they going to die?!”

“No, no, almost certainly not,” George reassured him. “I’m really sorry, James. I only just realized it too, when I came here to do a bit of tidying and saw the box I’d  _meant_ to grab. I just think your kids are going to be insufferable for a while.”

“‘Almost certainly not’,” James quoted. “That is  _not_ reassuring, Uncle George!”  

“I always start every experimental product with half the amount I think needs to be in it, so it’s okay. Angelina just said I should tell you in case they’re acting oddly.”

James huffed. He crossed his arms. “You know,  _this_ is exactly why Nora’s dads think my side of the family is less fit for babysitting! And how can I argue?! You poisoned my sons—Lulu lets Finnigan eat entire cakes when I’m not looking—Dominique nearly got Evra and Remus stuck on the roof yesterday…” James trailed off, annoyed. “You’re making things difficult for me here, Uncle George!”

His uncle held out a voucher. “Would you like a voucher for a free crate of Fidgety Fudge Cakes?”

James felt his eye twitch.

“Put the voucher away, Dad,” Roxanne hissed from the corner of her mouth.

Uncle George waved it tantalizingly in front of James’s face. “It’s great for nights when your kids won’t go to sleep…or nights you’d like a bit of alone time but you’re too tired…works better than coffee…”

James crossed his arms stubbornly. “If my kids don’t die, I’ll consider it.”

“Okay, well, I’ll put your name on it and leave it right behind the till.”

“I can’t believe you poisoned my babies. I’m going to tell my mum.”

“Don’t tell your mum!"

“I’m definitely going to tell my mum.”

“Don’t tell Ginny, it’s really not a problem, we don’t need to  _bother_ her…”

James looked away. Uncle George huffed.

“Well, fine! Be a Mummy’s boy! I hope murder weighs nicely on your shoulders!”

“ _Mum’s_  Boy,” James corrected hotly. He stamped toward the door, stopped, and stamped back over. “I’ll see you lot on Saturday for lunch.”

“Oh, right,” Angelina said. “We’re doing pizza.”

“If my sister doesn’t kill me, that is,” Uncle George added.

“How’s the inheritance going if you die, Dad?” Fred asked. “50/50?”

“75/25,” Roxanne scoffed. “I’m the 75.”

“No, and actually, Roxie, when your pony lost when we were little you said I’d get ten percent of your inheritance _plus_ my half!”

George was aghast. “You two were betting on your inheritance when you were kids? Oh, thanks!”

“You  _played the ponies_  when you were kids?!” Angelina demanded.

James thought it was probably a perfect time to leave the joke shop.

* * *

 

“DADDY’S BACK!!”

“YAY!!”

“DADDY, LOOK! LOOK!”

“DADDY, I BEATED DEAN! WITH FOOTBALL!”

“Daddy, Daddy, look at what I made with Seamus!”

“DADDY! DADDY! I missed you!”

“So loud…so much…screaming…going to…faint…” James choked.

James dramatically collapsed to the ground as his kids approached him. They weren’t fazed; they knew his tricks. They were giggling as they landed on top of him. 

“WAKE UP,” Finnigan shouted in James’s face. He felt Evra hugging his chest. Henry tapped his forehead incessantly.

“Daddy!” Henry laughed. He tapped harder. “…Daddy?”

James waited until the kids had fallen silent and began to get a bit concerned…and then he let out a bear growl and wrapped them up in his arms. He pressed kisses to their faces and laughed along with them. Nora was smiling above them when James peered up; the lights behind her head made her appear to be glowing. She lowered Delilah down. Their baby giggled loudly as James leaned up and blew a raspberry on her cheek. He sat up so he was sitting on Dean and Seamus’s kitchen floor and pulled Delilah into his arms.

“Well?” Dean asked. James glanced his way, not surprised to see him sitting at the dinner table with an array of art materials out. The kids must’ve been drawing with him. “What did George want?”

“Er…” James trailed off. He didn’t really want to tell his father-in-law that the kids had been poisoned. “Needed an emergency consult on…chocolate.”

Nora could tell James was lying but knew better than to ask. He shot her a quick, meaningful look and then rose to his feet.

“You’re the man for that job,” Nora told him, right as Seamus and Dean exchanged a skeptical look. She wrapped her arm around James’s waist and kissed his cheek. “Sugar expert.”

“To a fault, actually,” James said. “Remind me to start exercising more.”

“Nah,” she grinned. “I love you like this.”

James hoped her dads missed the playful pat she’d given his bum, but going by the look Dean shot him a moment later, they hadn’t.

* * *

 

“So? What happened?” Nora whispered.

James leaned over her to grab a ladle. He was just about to explain what had happened at the joke shop when he heard a crash from the garden, followed quickly by angry yelling.

“WHOEVER FIGHTS HAS TO EAT  _TWO_ SERVINGS OF MY SOUP!” James warned.

The fighting stopped at once.

“They're not exactly subtle, are they?” James said. “Still-- it's to our advantage. Who knew soup could be an effective punishment? I guess I should give up on it and stop making it on my nights, though...I never do a good job."

“No, they need to give your soup another chance...I bet you'll get it right this time!" Nora encouraged. She faced him. "What happened at the joke shop?”

James embarked on a quick retelling of his infuriating visit. Nora wasn’t as concerned as James was.

“Those kids got steady doses of caffeine from conception ‘til nearly two years of age; they’ll be just fine. He really ought to be more careful, though.”

“It could’ve been something much worse,” James agreed, troubled.

He peeked out of the window just above the sink. He scanned his eyes around the garden, counting his kids, to make sure none of them had wandered out of the gate. Delilah was still playing in her play pen (not that she really had a choice), Finnigan was trying to push Henry “to the stars!” in the swings, and Evra was crouching beside her bee-friendly flower garden in her plastic, bee-patterned apron, “observing” the bees as she often did. Harry had planted the mini garden for her on her last birthday. Evra had probably spent nearly half an entire year crouching in the grass, jotting down ‘notes’ about her favorite bees.

Once James was confident that the kids were, for the time being, okay, he turned his focus back to dinner. He sunk the ladle into the soup and took a tentative sip. It tasted much better than it had a few moments ago, even though James hadn’t added a thing. James looked suspiciously at his wife, standing a few feet away kneading bread dough.

“Did you put something in this?”

“What?” she asked sweetly. She glanced at him, her eyes widened innocently. “No, baby, I love your soup just the way it is.”

“Hmmm…” James said, but he was already laughing. Nora flicked her wand towards the record player; the record inside lifted up and then flipped, so they could listen to the other side. James felt a lovely calmness wash over him as it started up again. It was their favorite record, an old muggle find; one of his favorite things to do alone with Nora was comb through all the secondhand shops in London for records they’d never heard before. They probably had about a hundred by now, but he had no plans to stop collecting, not when he found—every now and then—a record like this one, that seemed to play notes in just the right order to touch something within him. He and Nora cooked side-by-side, surrounded by the sound of the singer’s soothing voice mingled in with their children’s laughter. James was overcome with such fond nostalgia that he felt it bursting out of him. He was thinking about the night they’d conceived Evra as he crossed over to his wife and pulled her into his arms; she rested her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck as he swayed them to the music, his arms around her waist.

“I wonder how Evra would feel if she knew she was conceived to this song,” Nora murmured.

James laughed brightly. He wasn’t surprised that she was thinking about the same thing. He pressed his face against her hair and let his hands fall to her hips.

“I wonder how my dad would feel if he knew she was most likely conceived in his office,” James mused. “He loves Evra, so maybe he’d feel honored?”

Nora cringed into his neck. “That fact will be _buried_ with us, Jamie. He can  _never_ know that.”

“No, no,” James promised. “Cross my heart. Nobody else will ever know.”

“Especially not Ben, ‘cause you know he’d never let us live that down,” Nora persisted. “He’d go to Hogwarts and put a plaque on the office door: ‘Ginevra Roxanne Potter was made here.’”

James leaned back and looked down at Nora. She lifted her head from his shoulder and met his eyes.

“Not the best way for my dad to find out,” James said, on the verge of laughter.

“No,” Nora agreed. “Not at all.”

They held their gaze for a moment longer before succumbing to laughter. James could almost  _see_ the way his dad’s jaw would drop if he saw that. His glasses would definitely rise up as his eyebrows did, making his scar look like a little, folded in lightning bolt. His laughter quickly turned into snickering.

“You’ve got to admit,” James said, “it’s a funny thought.”

“As long as it remains as such…I quite like your dad seeing me as the innocent Potter daughter and would like it to stay that way.”

She leaned her head back against his shoulder. He continued swaying his body with hers, his chest full of contentment. Every day James thought ‘ _I couldn’t possibly love her more’_ , and every day he was wrong.

“Nora?”

“Hmm?”

“I meant what I said last night. About supporting you. If you decide you want to be my brother’s surrogate.”

“Oh, I know you did. But I’m not doing anything unless I know you’re comfortable with it, too. It may be my body, but this is our life.”

James had known that deep down; he’d never been worried about that. The things he  _was_ worried about had felt so far away last night, but he found it easier to locate his thoughts now, with Nora in his arms and that familiar record playing; it calmed his frantic thoughts better than almost anything else.

“You’re right. We’re so lucky,” James said.

“Beyond words,” Nora agreed softly.

“I love the idea of giving something back. I love the idea of helping my brother. I love the idea of helping our society—the lack of magical births gets more and more stressful every day. But Nora, I don’t like the idea of any of that if it comes at the expense of your happiness.”

“Nor I with yours.”

“I’m so afraid that…when it comes down to it…” he trailed off. He pressed his face back into her hair. “I’m so worried that our hearts won’t get the full picture, that there will be a part of us that sees the baby as ours, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to give our baby away. Or come home from St. Mungo’s emptyhanded. When I think about pregnancy, I think about  _our babies_ , so it’s difficult for me.”

“It’s difficult for me, too,” she admitted. She lifted her hand and set it on the back of his neck. He held her tighter as her fingers caressed his skin. “If we were going to do it, it would have to be done with boundaries. I’ve been thinking loads about it. And we’ve got time, you know—to think about it. I shouldn’t get pregnant again for another seven months anyway. But I think…you know, I think if we approached it differently from the start, I think we could keep it separate in our minds. I think we could remember that it’s not ours, that we’re only watching over it for a bit.”

“Like not buying any baby things? So we remember that it isn’t coming home with us?” James asked.

“Right. And I don’t think I’d want you to talk or sing to the baby.”

James felt wounded. “What? I thought you loved when I did that.”

“I  _do_. Too much. That’s the point; if this happens, the pregnancy can’t be like our other ones, because then I’ll be thinking of it like it's ours. It’s got to be different-- separate.”

James thought he understood. He wracked his brains for another idea. “We could keep the scans off the fridge.”

“Yes, definitely. Albus and Scorpius would get every copy. And the kids have to know the truth from the start.”

“Yes,” James stressed. “Absolutely.”

As they both trailed off, James found himself thinking about the births of his children. Even thinking back on the emotions that had bombarded him from the first moment he held them made his eyes burn. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to hold the baby right after it’s born.”

“Nor me,” Nora agreed quickly. “That would be Albus and Scorpius’s moment. We could meet it later on, after the baby’s already cleaned up and such, after I’m done recovering. It’d be easier to think of her as  _their baby_ that way.”

There was only one question left. James didn’t want to be the one to ask it.

“What happens if, no matter how much we try to create distance, we end up feeling bonded with the baby anyway?” Nora asked. Her voice was small. James wished he had a definite answer.

“Well,” he began. He looked off towards the window. Henry had climbed into the play pen with Delilah; she was watching him shove her toy fish in the mouth of his giant, cuddly toy shark. “I suppose, if that happened, we’d do a lot of crying. But then…then we’d remember where the baby’s going. We’d remember that it’d be loved and it’s still our family and we could see it all the time. Every day, if we wanted. It won’t be like giving birth and handing it off to some stranger to never see again. It’ll still be our niece or nephew. We’ll still get to love it.”

“Albus and Scorpius would definitely give it a good life,” Nora said. He could hear the smile in her voice.

James smiled. “Yeah. Albus might be a surly little snake at times, but he’s got a knack for babies. And it’d make them so happy.”

“That emotion, the one you feel the first time you hold your brand new baby, the first time you become a parent…” Nora trailed off. James knew she’d be misty-eyed if he leaned back and looked at her expression. The wonder in her tone was achingly tender. “I want them to feel that. We could give them that, Jamie. How many people can say that? How many people get the chance to do something like that? It’s amazing.”

James had a different opinion. He kissed the top of her head and hoisted her up into his arms bridal-style. She smiled into their kiss.

“ _You’re_ amazing,” he amended.

She smiled softly at him. “There are loads people who would do this.”

“No,” James said. He shook his head. “There aren’t many people who would. And if we do it, I think you’re going to get a lot of people looking at you like you’re mad. People are going to ask why on  _earth_ you’d put yourself through the pain and inconvenience. Why you’d give so much without getting anything back.”

“Oh, I get plenty back,” Nora told him. “I get love from you and our kids every second of every day. That’s why I’m able to do it in the first place.”

James leaned over her and kissed both cheeks, her forehead, her nose, his entire chest brimming with devotion.

“Most people don’t think of love as currency,” he reminded her.

“Then they’ve never been loved well,” she decided.

He was seriously entertaining the idea of snogging her against the cupboard like they were teenagers again when their kids came running back inside.

“Mummy, do we  _have_ to eat Daddy’s soup?” Finnigan greeted.

James pretended to cry into Nora’s hair. Sweet Evra bought the performance. She set Delilah down on the rug near the door and poked Finnigan in his shoulder.

“Finnigan! Finnigan, you’re  _so mean_ , so, so  _mean_!” she raged. “You need to go sit in time out right now! Right now!!”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

“You made Daddy cry!!”

“He’s not really crying, he’s faking!”

“How do you know that?! He might not be!”

“No, he is, ‘cause his face isn’t red! Like a whole entire tomato!”

“Daddy, hold me,” Henry whined, his jealous eyes on his mum, still held in James’s arms. “My turn!”

"Manners?" James prompted.

"Please!!" 

James set Nora’s feet back on the ground. She walked over to stop Delilah from gnawing on a chair leg while James hoisted Henry into the air upside down. His fingers brushed the tiled floor as James swung him by his ankles.

“ _WHOAAAA_ ,” Henry cried, elated.

“All right, time for  _soup_ ,” Nora said cheerfully. A chorus of groans punctuated her statement. “When you get old enough to make your own dinner, you can complain.”

James levitated the pot in front of him and walked around the table, distributing two full ladles worth of soup into each silver bowl. His kids were exchanging sour, side-eyed glances, communicating without words the same sentiment to one another. Even Delilah looked a bit insulted. James sighed; he’d tried multiple times to get his dad’s soup recipe right, but it never turned out the same; Harry’s had flavor, whereas James’s…well, on good days it tasted like the water that came in bean tins.

“ _Daaaaaaddy_ ….” Henry whined, clearly less than impressed with his meal. He squirmed in his seat.

“Don’t you start,” Nora warned him, without even glancing his way.

James took his place at the end of the table. To his left, Finnigan was leaning over his soup bowl and glaring at the contents.

“What’s in it?” Finnigan demanded.

James and Nora exchanged a tired look. They had hoped his outrage at animal products would wear off throughout the day, but he didn’t seem to be wavering much.

“Vegetables and beans,” James reassured him.

Finnigan glanced up at James. The steam wafting from his soup made his curls seem wilder than usual.

“No piggies?”

“No.”

Finnigan tapped his fingers on the table top. “No cow babies or cow mamas?”

“No.”

He cautiously lifted his spoon. “No cats?”

“ _What_? No, Finnigan.”

“Okay, I’ll eat it,” he allowed, as if he were doing them a grand favor. He brought a spoonful to his lips. A few seconds after he’d tasted it, his eyes widened. “ _What_?! Evra! Evra!! It’s  _yum_!”

“I’m not falling for  _that one_  again...”

“No! It  _is_!” Finnigan persisted. As if to prove his point, he took another bite.

Emboldened by their brother’s first foray into risky soup territory, Evra and Henry hesitantly went about sipping the soup, too. James knew for a  _fact_ that Nora had made it taste better when even  _Henry_ decided to eat his dinner.

“How’d you do it?” James demanded.

“Do what?” Nora asked.

“Make it taste good.”

“No idea what you’re asking me. Really, Jamie baby, no idea,” she shrugged. He arched an eyebrow. She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes.

James grinned into his glass of water. Quite honestly, he couldn’t  _wait_ for bedtime.

* * *

 

Evvie arrived during bath time. Nora and James looked at each other as they heard her voice call up the stairs.

“You go,” James offered, his hands barely keeping squirmy Delilah from slipping beneath the water. He was covered with bubbles and his exhaustion was making him a bit impatient. “Finnigan and Henry! Bring her bath seat back, for the last time! Your baby doll doesn’t need a bath seat, my  _real_ baby does!”

The boys—splashing around like wild animals at the far end of the massive bathtub—gave immediate whines of complaint. James’s breath caught as a sudden wave of water swelled up and crashed into him and Nora, leaving the bathroom floor flooded, their entire bodies soaked, and—

“Delilah!” James cried. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought she’d fallen to the bottom of the bathtub because the force of the magically-induced wave had knocked him back enough to loosen his grip on her. But Evra had pulled her over into her lap and was giggling with her as if nothing had happened. They were clearly used to Finnigan’s magical outbursts.

“No, she’ll have to come up here,” Nora decided. “This is chaos.” She walked to the doorway, leaned out, and called Evvie up. James was standing fully-clothed in the bathtub, trying his hardest to get a comb through reluctant Henry’s hair, when he heard Evvie enter.

“Oh, God.”

“ _Evvie_!” the kids shouted, overjoyed. Henry used the distraction as an excuse to duck beneath the water, evading James’s grooming attempts.

“Hi, Ev,” James greeted distractedly. He bent over at the waist and reached beneath the water for Henry. Bubbles drifted to the surface as Henry let out a burst of laughter under the water. James grabbed his arms and gently lifted him back upright.

“We need to talk,” Evvie told them.

“Right this moment?” Nora asked. “Finnigan, stop piling bubbles on Delilah’s head! It could get into her eyes!”

Sure enough, Delilah began shrieking a moment later. James abandoned his hair-combing mission and flocked to his daughter’s side. He and Nora fussed over their baby while Finnigan treated Evvie to a five-minute lecture on all his bath toys. Once Delilah’s eyes were soap-free, Nora bundled her up in a warm towel and stepped out onto the tiles.

“Thanks for cleaning the water up,” Nora told their friend. She dumped Delilah into Evvie’s arms. Evvie parted her lips, as if to object (probably due to her expensive looking dress), but thought better of it; Finnigan had just dumped a bucket of water on Evra’s head, resulting in a bathtime brawl that both James  _and_ Nora had to mediate. James was so tired come the end of it that he actually sat down beside Henry (still fully clothed), threw the comb across the bathroom, and combed his son’s hair with his fingers instead. Henry leaned happily into his touch.

“What was it you needed to talk about?” Nora asked. She wrapped Finnigan in a warm towel and sent him with Evra to get dressed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. It’s about the blood samples.”

James frowned. “We haven’t asked Evra yet and I’m not sure we want to—”

“No,” Evvie interrupted him. She gritted her teeth; the pain her DoM agreement caused whenever she breached confidentiality must’ve begun. “I don’t need it anymore. I’ve examined yours and James’s, Iset’s, and Lily got a sample of lime pox sent our way late last night. I compared what I found in Iset’s blood with it. Can you believe Lily was right? I almost don’t want to tell her…it was my coworker who sent her a letter telling her to keep her nose out of our department’s business…”

“Wait, wait, hang on a moment,” James hissed. He made sure Henry’s hair was conditioned and tangle-free, helped him stand up, and then caught the towel Nora tossed his way. He wrapped him up in it and lifted him. “So Iset is infected with lime pox—confirmed?”

“Correct.”

“And it’s what’s causing the squib births?”

“Correct. I compared Iset’s with the samples we’ve got from the parents of a Squib child—all three have lime pox, as does the squib child’s sample.”

“Okay, so, great!” Nora said. She smiled. James spotted Delilah grinning back at her mum from Evvie’s arms. “So now you’ve just got to find a cure and things will get better!”

“Ideally, yes, but it took hundreds of years to create a dragon pox cure, and this strand is much more complex. It’s going to take ages, even considering how much more we know. We’ve got to look at short-term solutions. James, I’ve spoken with Hermione and we’re organizing a meeting on Monday between the relevant departments to try and figure out what to do. Okay,” she reached up with one hand and touched her temple with a grimace. “We can’t talk about specifics in the DoM anymore, okay? We can talk about the meeting but not about anything within the DoM. I feel like somebody’s ripping my brain apart.” 

“Well, we all know what they need to decide to do at tomorrow’s meeting. Get rid of the poached items firstly, right?” Nora demanded. She leaned out of the bathroom. “Evra! Finnigan! Come brush your teeth, loves!”

“It’ll take more than that. If we want to get this under control, we’re going to have to find a way to organize a testing system for potential parents, so we can get those who  _aren’t_ infected to hopefully have babies…God, the social  _headache_ this is going to be…I don’t envy your aunt. Or you, for that matter, James.”

James grimaced.  He helped Henry up onto the stepstool in front of the sink and handed him his tiny toothbrush; Nora had already put toothpaste on it. “Things aren’t going well at all in my department, Evvie. We really need a decent solution here. Not even just for the fact that the population’s dwindling rapidly; we’ve got people abandoning their non-magical children left and right. I’ve got just enough foster families to cover the amount in the system right now, but we can’t handle any more. We’ve got to get those who are infected to stop having babies until there’s a cure, unless they’re willing to stand by their children no matter what.” Henry finished ‘brushing’ his teeth and held the toothbrush out for his dad to take. James kneeled down and re-brushed Henry’s teeth carefully, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

“Here, will you put a nappy on her? Here’s her sleepsuit, too,” Nora said to Evvie. While Evvie readied Delilah for bed, James helped Evra and Finnigan up in front of the sink as soon as they entered. Nora handed them their toothbrushes.

“I’ll work on a proposal for a testing system we could establish at St. Mungo’s,” Evvie said. James turned around to face her and Nora, so his back was to the sink. He propped Henry on his hip. Henry yawned and rested his head against James’s shoulder as Evvie finished buttoning up Delilah. She continued her previous topic. “Rose wants to outlaw the Magical Indication Screenings they do post-birth. She’s coming to the meeting Monday, too.”

“Oh, blimey,” James said, horrified. “She’s really stepping on the toes of the pureblood elitists. That was their crowning moment when that test was established.”

“Yeah, and wait until you hear what those elitists are suggesting. They want to implement prenatal magical screenings.”

The way Evvie had frowned told James all he needed to know. “So they can do away with any non-magical babies they might get pregnant with.”

“Right. It’s complicated because you’ve got people claiming it’s their right, because it’s their bodies, which is a fair point and something to consider…but then you’ve got others pointing out that it’s effectively eugenics. I’d bring a bit of pain potion tomorrow, James. It’s going to be horrid. There will inevitably be screaming from start to finish.”

James sighed tiredly. As his mind worked through the seriousness of the population dilemma, he found himself thinking about the surrogacy question.

“Evvie, I’ve got a hypothetical question…”

While he explained the specifics of the situation, Evvie listened intently. Nora sent the older three to their rooms to wait for story time. When he reached the end of his explanation, he realized he felt a bit nervous, though he wasn’t sure why. Was there a part of him hoping she'd say it was a good idea (or a part of him hoping she'd say it was a bad idea)?

“So…would that work? Would that  _help_? Because with things being the way they are…well, if Albus and Scorpius could have a magical baby…that’s at least one more schoolmate for Delilah at Hogwarts, right?” he pointed out.  

Evvie looked at Nora. For a second, James feared she’d scold her. But she smiled. She reached up and set her palm against Nora’s cheek; it was an uncharacteristically sweet gesture.

“That’s a very kind thing,” she told Nora.

“We aren’t decided for sure,” Nora reminded Evvie. “I think James is just curious about what steps we’d have to take to make sure we all remain uninfected.”

“Well, I’d have to test the donor mum’s blood and Scorpius’s. I’ve already checked yours, of course, Nora. Afterwards, the main thing would be staying out of contact with all poached items while you’re pregnant. You know, if we could set up a surrogacy program in our world…that would help so much. I might pay Scorpius a visit. That was a clever idea. Leave it to a Slytherin Head Boy.”

Evvie said goodbye to them and their kids, set towards the staircase, and then stopped. She turned back around and looked at them.

“Is bedtime always this hectic now?” she wondered. "Wasn't like that before, when Ben and I lived here. You know we're still around to help if you need it."

“Oh, no, it's not typically like this,” James said bitterly. “They’ve just had a very interesting day…thanks to being  _poisoned_  on Christmas.”

“What?!”

“You really shouldn’t word it like that, Jamie…”

* * *

 

“You’re getting sleepy…you’re so tired you can hardly function…if you looked into the Mirror of Erised, you’d see a bed with loads of pillows…is it working?”

“Not at all,” Nora yawned.

James rolled onto his back with a sigh. Between him and Nora, Delilah continued cooing and gnawing on her socked feet. So much for lovemaking and an early bedtime. It was nearly midnight, it’d taken  _four hours_ to get the other three to settle, and Delilah continued her post-Christmas pattern of short catnaps that seemed to fuel her for hours afterwards.

“I might actually kill my uncle,” James realized. He stared up at the ceiling. “Murder. Me, a murderer. Would you still love me if I murdered?”

“How would you kill him?”

“Humanely. Hemlock?”

“I’m concerned that you consider hemlock humane?”

“No, you’re right,” James relented. He moaned pitifully. “I’m so tired.”

“I’m beyond tired. I’m not even sure I’m in my body right now,” Nora admitted.

James rolled back over to face Delilah. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at his daughter. She met his eyes. Her resulting smile was unfairly adorable. Her dimples made him smile back despite his frustration.

“Delilah, my darling dearest Delilah,” he cooed. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you go to sleep? What do you need? Another lullaby?”

She continued staring happily at him as she drooled all over her sock.

“No? A story? Do you want Mummy to perform a monologue?”

Delilah kicked her feet out and giggled. Nora and James exchanged a wide-eyed look. Nora obliged at once.

“‘What, have I scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let me see: 'ask me no reason why I love you—’”

Delilah kicked her feet even harder. Nora stopped, for fear of making her even more energetic. They watched as she struggled to roll over onto her tummy (she found it difficult to do on the soft mattress). James helped her. Once she was on her tummy, she reached out towards her mum. She babbled as she sweetly stroked Nora’s pajama top. It was clear in Delilah language. Nora sighed.

“Oh, all right,” she relented. She scooted up and pulled Delilah into her arms. Delilah’s babbling grew much happier. “But you’re getting impressively chubby, Delilah. I swear you can eat more than any baby I’ve ever met.”

James leaned over and tickled Delilah’s foot.

“That’s your little Weasley genes, my love, did you know that?” he asked her.

She babbled back like they were having a conversation. James nodded seriously.

“Good point,” he told her.

Delilah nursed for maybe three minutes and then promptly fell asleep. They stared at their daughter in disbelief.

“That’s the equivalent of Henry falling asleep at the chippy before his food’s even arrived. And that boy loves his chips.”

“I think she’s just had a caffeine crash,” James realized.

They held their breath as Nora passed Delilah over to James. He very slowly settled her down in the cot beside their bed. They didn’t so much as move for a full two minutes.

“I think it’s finally over,” James whispered, his eyes on Delilah’s little back as it rose and fell steadily. “I think she’s really out.”

“Merlin, this day has been like the first two months all over again,” Nora marveled. “Albus and Scorpius really have no idea what they’ll be getting themselves into with a newborn.”

“Eh, they’ll learn,” James yawned. “We did.”

They shifted beneath the covers. Nora wedged her hand beneath her pillow and faced James.

“Yeah, but we spent our first few weeks with your mum and dad. Double the parents.”

“Are you joking? I’m sure my mum and dad will be there for the first few weeks with them, too…and Draco!”

“Mmm, fair point,” she yawned.

After snuggling up, they both slipped off to sleep. It was the best sleep James had had in a very long time.

* * *

 

“And then Uncle George told me that he’d  _poisoned_ them!” James recounted.

His mum choked on her tea. She barely managed to cover her mouth with a napkin as she coughed it up.

“What?!”

James gave another spirited recount of the Christmas Poisoning of 2027. His mum was outraged.

“That  _idiot_! How difficult is it to label your laced products?! I’m going to kill him!”

“Oh, question of interest, Ginny,” Nora said. She leaned over the table towards Ginny and laced her hands together. “How would you kill him?”

“Humanely,” Ginny said at once. She nodded. “Poison him right back.”

James enveloped his mum in a fond hug.

“James is  _so_ your son…” Nora said, amused.

“I can’t believe Georgie poisoned you!” Ginny cooed to Delilah. Delilah was in an amazing mood after her long, unperturbed sleep the night before. James and Nora had even taken the kids into London for breakfast to show Delilah off; she was an attention-grabbing ray of sunshine when she was in cute, agreeable moods like this (which, to be fair,  _was_ often). She always made elderly people in particular really happy, and James loved watching people fawn over his kids.

“So what do you think, Ginny?” Nora asked, interrupting Ginny’s continued cooing to her granddaughter. “About the surrogacy thing.”

Ginny looked up. Her eyes softened. “I think, if it were me, you’d be one of the only people in the entire world that I’d trust completely to do something like that.”

“Aw,” Nora said, touched. She set a hand over her heart and smiled at Ginny.

Ginny’s expression gradually fell. She cocked her head to the side and peered hard at the floor. “It  _is_ a bit strange though…my daughter-in-law being pregnant with my son’s husband’s baby and my daughter’s baby…I’ve got about three separate connections to the kid…it's sort of a grandchild from all three of my kids at once...”

James was confused.

“Wait, what? Your daughter? What’s Lulu got to do with this?” he asked.

Ginny looked back at him. “Oh. I thought you would’ve heard. Albus said she offered to donate a few of her eggs. Granted, it wasn’t a particularly moving or maternal moment, and Scorpius says she sort of offered them like somebody offers the last few chips on their plate when they’re full but…very kind despite.”

James gaped.

“That’s lovely!” Nora said.

“Oh my…God and Merlin…” James managed.

“I’m actually really relieved to hear that. One thing that’s been making me uncomfortable is the idea of a stranger’s eggs being used to create the embryo…it’d be weird to have some parts of somebody I don’t even know inside of me…”

“But my sister being inside of you  _isn’t_ weird?!” James demanded. His mum arched an eyebrow. He backtracked. “In retrospect, I regret my phrasing, but my point still stands.”

“Why’s that weirder than Scorpius being inside of me?”

“I dunno, it just  _is_ …honestly, I hate the idea that my little sister’s even  _got_ eggs to give…” James trailed off with a shudder.

“Eggs form in the womb,” Ginny and Nora said in sync. They looked at each other with adorable looks of surprise. James was torn between fondness and disgust at what they’d actually said.

“I think I spend too much time with you two,” Ginny admitted.

“No such thing! Unless my dads ask…in which case, you hardly ever see us…”

“Oh Merlin, you two didn’t tell Dean and Seamus about the poisoning did you?”

“Absolutely not,” James reassured her.

“Good. I can’t take another comment from them. I might end up tackling your dad to the ground, Nora.”

“Can you make sure we’re there to see it? I could really use the laugh.”

Ginny leaned over and knocked her mug against Nora’s. “Will do.”

Harry stumbled in five minutes later, a kid standing on each foot and Evra on his shoulders. “What sounds good for lunch, Gin?”

“Anything—maybe  _everything_ —I’m starving.”

“That’s where you get it from, Delilah,” James said, his eyes landing on the happy baby lying on Ginny’s lap. He leaned over Nora and tickled Delilah’s tummy. “Your strong, impressive appetite.”

“Evra? Finnigan? Henry? Any ideas better than ‘everything’?” Harry asked.

The kids shouted out a confusing tangle of different ideas. James went ahead and warned his dad before he found out the hard way.

“Finnigan’s decided he’s a vegetarian and he’s going to interrogate you on every single ingredient in everything you make. It’s his new thing.”

“It’s very tiring,” Nora added. “He interrogated me over eggs this morning. Wanted to know if the farmers asked the hens for their eggs or just stole them.”

Ginny choked against a withheld laugh. James kneaded his temples tiredly.

“We can work with that,” Harry reassured Finnigan. “How about the Lulu Special? Handcrafted for feisty, finicky babies born in April?”

“Is it  _cake_?!”

“ _No_ ,  _Finnigan!”_ they all chorused.

* * *

 

Scorpius and Albus arrived perfectly on time. Harry had just finished lunch as they stepped out of the Floo. They managed to brush most of the soot from their clothes before James’s kids bombarded them with hugs and kisses.

“I missed you both  _terribly_ ,” Evra told them.

“Really? You just saw us two days ago,” Albus reminded her, amused.

Scorpius lifted her up and twirled her around and around in a series of dizzying spins. She was roaring with laughter when they came to a stop.

There was an argument over who would get to sit next to Albus and Scorpius as the kids took their seats. In the end, Henry got to sit in Albus’s lap, Evra was beside Scorpius, and Finnigan got to be between both of them. James settled down with Delilah, heated a bottle with the tap of his wand, and cradled her as she ate.

“So,” James said. “Nora and I have been talking about—”

“I didn’t mean to!” Scorpius blurted.

Silence fell over the table.

“Er…what?” James asked, confused.

Scorpius frowned. “I didn’t mean to make her feel like she had to offer that. Nora, I’m so sorry. I feel so terrible about it…”

“He’s been insufferable these past few days,” Albus told the table. “He’s convinced he ‘manipulated you’, Nora.”

“ _What_?” she laughed, baffled. 

“I must’ve! I must have done! I was drunk and I didn’t mean to cry, didn’t mean to make it seem like…like…” Scorpius trailed off. Even he seemed a bit confused about what he was trying to say. “The point is, that never even occurred to me, Nora, and I would  _never, ever_ ask you or anybody else to do that. I hope you still love me and think I’m a nice person. Do you?”

James met his mum’s eyes. They both had to look away quickly to keep from laughing.

“Scorpius,  _I_ offered. I’d been thinking about since the night before. James and I had a brief discussion about it before we even went to the Burrow. You didn’t manipulate me.”

“You _couldn’t_  manipulate her, mate,” James reassured him. Nora was far too adept at reading people.

“But…but…but…”

“I’d let her carry my baby,” Ginny said.

“Mum!” Albus complained.

“What?” Ginny asked. She shrugged and took another sip of her pumpkin juice. “I would. Look how healthy and gorgeous all her babies are. Clearly, she does a good job.”

She gestured towards Delilah. James lifted her up slightly—just enough that she could be seen above the table.

“That’s all my genes,” James quipped with feigned cockiness. Albus threw a bit of carrot across the table at him; James opened his mouth by instinct to jokingly try to catch it, actually managed to catch it in his mouth, let out a war-cry…and then realized absolutely nobody had seen it. His shoulders fell. He looked down at his daughter; his heart jumped when he realized she was smiling hugely at him, the bottle fallen from her mouth. He leaned over and kissed over her dimple.

“ _You_ saw that, didn’t you, darling?” he cooed quickly.

She babbled back and reached up to grab at his face. James smiled and allowed her to poke at his nose and eyes as she latched back onto the bottle.

“That’s…a big thing, what Nora’s offering,” Scorpius finally said. He seemed a bit speechless. “Nora, why would you—”

“ _AUNTIE LULU_!”

James glanced towards the fireplace at Finnigan’s cry. Lily stepped out, coughing a bit because of the dust and soot. She tapped her wand against her glasses, cleaning the dirt from the lenses. Finnigan catapulted over his chair and sped across the kitchen; Lily lifted him up into her arms and accepted his messy kiss.

“You’re late,” Ginny tsked.

“Sorry, had an appointment,” Lily answered. She evaded Finnigan’s fifth sloppy kiss and glanced at the table. She brightened. “Lulu Special! I knew I was your favorite, Dad.”

“It’s for  _me_ ,” Finnigan corrected her.

Lily withdrew her arms at once, sending Finnigan crashing towards the ground. She caught him a half-second before he actually made contact with the wooden floor. Finnigan found it as delightful as he always did.

Lily sat down in the vacant seat on James’s other side and dug something from her pocket. She ignored her food as she lifted up what James recognized at once as a muggle mobile phone. James’s kids watched on curiously as she squinted at the screen. James exchanged a look with his dad.

“Why do you have a muggle pocket telephone?” Ginny finally asked in a tired tone. 

Lily continued tapping away at the screen, her brow furrowed in annoyance. “Hugo gave me one. So we can all stay in touch when I go back to New Zealand next week. He told me letters are ‘archaic’…damn it! I hate this piece of absolute, utter—”

“The kids!” James reminded her. “No swearing! I mean it!”

“—Dragon dung,” she completed, a twinge of annoyance in her voice.

“What are you trying to do?” Nora asked. “I can help. My dad has had one for as long as I can remember.”

Lily looked over at Nora. “I want the lady gone,” she said gravely.

“The lady?” Nora repeated, puzzled. “Oh! The interface.”

“I don’t want her to live in the phone. It’s private.”

“Oh, no, it’s not like portraits or anything, it doesn’t have its own thoughts or feelings,” Nora reassured Lily.

Lily arched an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

“Because I just…do.” Nora seemed to realize she wasn’t going to win that battle with Lily. She held out her hand. “Here, let me see. I’ll see if I can turn it off.”

Lily tightened her hold on her new phone.

“Mmm…better not. Thanks, though.”

“Don’t be silly,” Nora persisted. “I can fix it. No use getting upset.”

“No, trust me on this. Better not.”

“Oh, just give her the phone,” Albus snapped, clearly annoyed on Nora’s behalf. He leaned over the table and snatched it from Lily’s hands.

“Oi!” she cried. He tapped a few times at the screen. Lily lunged across the table to try and pull it from his hands, but she wasn’t tall enough; her arms didn’t stretch close enough to reach him. “Albus, do not look at my letters!”

“Your what?”

“I think she means the messages,” Nora supplied.

“Why not?” Albus taunted. “Have you been sending little ‘I love you’ texts to your little boyfriend— _OH, MERLIN_!”

Albus dropped the phone to the tabletop. The interface Lily hated so much came to life.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite get that—”

“Idiot,” Lily muttered. “Both you, Albus, and the Phone Woman.”

James was a bit lost, but going by Albus’s disgusted expression, he was thankful for that fact. He’d rather be lost than nauseated.

“Mum!” Albus exploded.

“No, don’t look at me,” Ginny said. She continued eating. “It’s hers. She warned you. You did it anyway. You can live with whatever you saw.”

Albus looked to Harry next.

“Honestly, Al, you should’ve known better,” Harry said.

Lily held out her hand expectantly. Albus dropped the phone into it like it was covered in dog sick. He wiped his hand on his trousers afterwards.

“I’m going to tell Draco,” Albus warned. “I know what time it is. I know Caden’s at work right now. That’s inappropriate!”

Lily had already leaned back in her chair and lifted the phone back up. She was painstakingly tapping the screen bit-by-bit. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell him, then…no, that  _is_ how you spell ‘tremble’! I’m turning you off, Spelling Boss, you stupid fu – ”

“Lily! No  _swearing_!”

“ _Fine_! Merlin, I shouldn’t’ve come,” she grumbled. She seemed exceptionally surly. “Nora, how do I turn the spelling thing off?”

“Give it here.” Nora held her hand out. “I won’t look at your messages, I promise.”

“At least  _somebody’s_ got brains,” Lily muttered.

“Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t’ve come,” Albus said. Lily glared at him. James knew he only had a few seconds to intervene before it became a fight.  

“Don’t you two start,” James complained. He watched his little sister slide down in her chair, the corners of her mouth pulled down in a deep frown. When she crossed her arms over her chest, she reminded him of a sulky toddler. “What’s wrong with you, Lily? Muggle technology is nothing but trouble, you know.”

“No, it’s not that,” she snapped.

“Albus can be a—”

“It’s not Albus, either.”

“Albus can be a  _what_?” Albus challenged James. James didn’t reply.

Like before, Scorpius seemed to explode.

“Is it the eggs? Because it’s okay if you changed your mind, Lily! I understand. I understand completely. You don’t owe us anything, much less your child, so I absolutely get it.”

“No, no,” she said. Nora passed the phone back to her; she dropped it down into her lap. “It’s not about the…E-G-G-S.”

“Eggs!” Evra said.

“Where?!” Finnigan panicked. He shoved his plate away and looked at Harry, furious. “You said  _no eggs_!”

“No, no, not on the plate,” Nora reassured their son. “Eat your lunch, love.” She looked at Lily. “Nervous about going back to New Zealand?” she said knowingly.

Lily grimaced. “No,” she lied, but her face had visibly fallen, and she’d slid down even more in her chair.  

It  _was_ coming up—her departure date. James felt a bit more sympathy for her. He certainly couldn’t imagine doing what she did. He couldn’t imagine living so far from his mum and dad. From  _Nora_.

“You don’t  _have_  to go,” Harry said (a bit  _too_ casually).

“Of course I do, Dad,” Lily said. She sounded very tired. She picked at her food for a few moments and then the phone buzzed loudly in her lap. She lifted it back up. The smile that spread across her face was much more radiant than anything their attempts at reassurance had caused.

“So, let’s talk about this while we’re all here,” Ginny urged, Lily’s departure obviously still on her mind. “Scorpius, you’ve been working with a muggle doctor who does all of this, right? Have you found ways to use magic to make it less risky? Because I was up all night reading one of the books you loaned me and it seems a bit…frightening. Not sure I like the idea of Lily or Nora undergoing it the muggle way.”

Scorpius brightened. “Yes, actually! I’ve begun working on something that I think will be very effective—and very safe. Much less invasive, too. It’ll take a few months, but yes, I feel very confident about it!”

“Nora shouldn’t have another baby for a while anyway,” James reminded everybody. He set the drained bottle on the table and lifted Delilah up as an explanation. He turned her around and held her to his chest a moment afterwards, his hand patting gently at her back. It only took a few pats before she gave a hearty belch. Henry clapped immediately.

“Wow, Delilah!” Finnigan said excitedly. “That one is a six!! Your highest score since you were even borned!”

Evra didn’t join in on Finnigan and Henry’s celebration. She’d slapped her hands over her mouth. “Mummy’s having a  _baby_?!”

 _Bugger._ “Oh, no, darling, Mummy’s not,” James told her quickly. She deflated in disappointment. James and Nora held an inquisitive glance—should they explain what they were considering to Evra now? Or should they wait until it was definite? Nora’s eyes appeared concerned, which indicated to James that she was worried about how Evra would take it (which meant she’d probably want to see how she’d take it before they made concrete plans). James nodded.

“Evra,” Nora began. She reached over and took their daughters’ hands. “You know how mummies grow babies in their tummies?”

Evra nodded.

“Well, did you ever wonder about families that are two daddies?”

She very clearly hadn’t, but at those words, she glanced right at Albus and Scorpius. Albus appeared a bit chuffed to have himself referred to as a dad. He sat up straighter and reached for Scorpius’s hand. Scorpius’s cheeks had pinked a bit, but he was smiling.

“Dean and Seamus are two daddies,” Finnigan shared. He continued cramming his mouth full with pita right afterwards.

“Right,” Nora said. She gently brushed Evra’s curls back from her face. “And the first Delilah grew me in her tummy. I may do the same for your uncles—take care of their baby in my tummy, just for a little while. How would you feel about that?”

James had mostly expected Evra to accept it with no scruples. She thought her mum had personally crafted each star and would’ve accepted anything she told her. But at that, Evra’s smile crumbled.

“ _What_?!” she said. She looked from James to Nora. “You’re going to marry my uncles?! You’re already married!! To Daddy!”

There were many hasty coughs as every adult tried to withhold their laughter. Nora reached for Evra; Evra climbed into her lap at once, her arms loops around Nora’s neck, her face still blanketed in a horrified expression.

“People can have babies when they aren’t married,” she told her.

“First Delilah was your mummy and Dean was married to her. Dean let me dress up in her wedding dress!” Evra persisted.

James thought it was actually clever of his daughter to make that connection, to realize that, in order for Nora to have Albus and Scorpius’s baby ‘like Delilah had had her’, that that would imply she was actually marrying and being with Albus and Scorpius. James wanted to brag about his child’s intelligence but realized that it wasn’t the time.

Nora glanced at Ginny, imploring assistance. Ginny leaned towards Evra.

“Evra, remember when Mummy was pregnant with Delilah?” Ginny asked.

Evra nodded.

“It’ll be like that—only it won’t be Mummy and Daddy’s baby in her tummy, it’ll be Albus and Scorpius’s. It won’t be your brother or sister; it’ll be your cousin. And they’ll take care of it until it’s ready to be born…like…babysitting! And then Albus and Scorpius will take it home.”

“That’s a big babysitting,” Finnigan murmured beneath his breath. Everybody looked at him. He continued eating his lunch.

Evra furrowed her brow as she thought. “But there’s no flowers.”

 _Oh, Merlin_. James exchanged a dismayed look with Nora. He realized this was going to get a lot more technical than he’d hoped.

“Er…flowers?” Ginny asked.

“A mummy’s a flower and a daddy’s a honeybee,” Evra explained, as if Ginny had no idea how reproduction worked. It wasn’t a very tidy comparison, but the first time Evra had curiously asked him how the baby got inside Nora’s stomach, he’d panicked a bit. And they'd  happened to be eating honey toast at the time.

“ _Oh_ ,” Ginny realized. “Er…well…”

“‘Cause Alby and Scorpius are both daddies so they’re both honeybees.”

Everybody hesitated awkwardly. Lily was impervious to it.

“Fittingly, Evra, I’m the flower,” she said. She’d been staring at the phone, but after a moment, she lowered it. She looked towards the table with a furrowed brow. “Or…wait, don’t bees carry pollen from one flower to another? Wouldn’t that imply that a man’s co—”

“LILY!”

“It’s just not a very great example, is all, Jamie. She’s going to grow up thinking it involves three people. Which I guess it does for some…”

James looked back at his daughter. She looked even  _more_ confused. She looked at Albus and Scorpius.

“Auntie Lulu’s the flower?”

“Maybe, if she still wants to be when we get this all figured out,” Scorpius explained gently.

“So…Auntie Lulu’s the flower…but there’s two bees?”

James was getting a headache.

“No, Scorpius will be the bee,” Albus piped up, only  _barely_ managing to keep his laughter at bay. His smirk resisted being suppressed. James kicked his leg from underneath the table. He didn’t want Evra to feel like they were laughing  _at_ her.

Evra’s face brightened. “Oh! And then Mummy will take care of the baby in her tummy for you.”

“Right!” Nora and Ginny exclaimed proudly.

“How do you feel about that?” Scorpius asked. “Is that okay with you, Evra?”

Evra was beaming. “I  _so want_ another cousin, Scorpy.”

Scorpius’s face widened with a radiant smile. “Yeah? How about you, Finnigan?”

Finnigan looked up, his cheeks bulging with food. “Wha—?”

“I don’t think the boys are really old enough to get it yet,” Albus hissed to Scorpius.

“I  _am_ old enough! I’m big!” Finnigan argued at once.

“Okay, are you okay with it?” Albus challenged his nephew.

Finnigan looked uncertainly at James. James nodded.

“Yes, I am!” Finnigan proclaimed.

“And you, Henry? What about you?” Scorpius asked softly.

Henry looked up at him happily, still seated in Albus’s lap. He clearly felt extremely important to have been included; his smile was one of the brightest James had ever seen. His heart swelled about tenfold, and judging by the way everybody around the table had seemed to melt a bit, everybody else’s had, too.

“YES!” Henry cried, even though there was no way he’d truly grasped what they were talking about.

“Delilah?” Scorpius asked. By this point, Scorpius was openly beaming. Albus was snickering at his side—amused by Scorpius’s insistence on getting an infant’s approval—but his eyes were full of affection.

James turned Delilah around so she was facing Scorpius.

“Scorpius wants to know if this is okay with you, Delilah,” James prompted seriously.  

Delilah clumsily slapped at the edge of the table, and when James wrapped his arms around her (to keep her from hurting her little hands in her excitement), she leaned forward and pressed her open mouth to his forearm. The table erupted in laughter as she blew a slobbery raspberry. She seemed incredibly proud of herself, enough so that she sat back up (a bit unsteadily) and collapsed into raucous giggles. James thought he could visibly mark the moment Albus’s baby fever reached all-time highs, but he couldn’t blame him; Delilah was, by all accounts, irresistibly adorable. If she wasn’t already his baby, he was sure he and Nora would be heading home to make another one that very moment.

“So are we doing this, then?” Albus blurted. James didn’t know if he’d tried to hide the longing in his voice, but if he had, he’d failed miserably. James sent his eldest three out into the garden to play (after making sure they’d eaten enough of their lunch), and then he exchanged a look with his mum. Scorpius and Nora looked at each other. Nora looked at James. Scorpius looked at Lily. James looked at Albus. Nobody said anything for a least a minute.

“We could think on it for a bit,” Scorpius finally said. He sounded nervous and a bit crestfallen; James guessed he’d taken the silence as a bad thing. “You shouldn’t be pregnant again for at least seven more months, Nora, so we can use that time to read loads of books…talk with some Muggle surrogates and families…go over the methods I’m working on in detail…make sure everybody’s  _really_ comfortable with this…”

James knew Nora’s soft smile, and he knew her silence hadn’t been a bad thing.

“All of that sounds like a really good idea,” she told Scorpius. She reached over and took his hand; Scorpius’s eyes seemed a bit misty as he covered her hand with his other one. “But I’m already on board. These months will be for planning more than decision making.”

Scorpius was choked up and couldn’t seem to find anything to say. He looked at Albus, but Albus was looking at Lily.

“Lily, you really don’t have to do this,” he told her. James hardly ever heard Albus speak gently to Lily (because Lily wasn’t exactly a person that required gentleness on a daily basis), so it got his full attention. He examined his sister. Her face was turned down, and from what they could see of her expression, her brow was furrowed. Was she having second thoughts?

“What?” Lily asked, without looking up. James realized she was probably looking at the phone again. “Scorpius, how do you spell ‘undulate’?” 

Scorpius smiled proudly. “That’s a great word, Lily! U-N-D—”

“Don’t answer that,” Albus said quickly, his lip curled up in disgust. “Lily, are you even listening to this conversation? This is a big deal, you know. You’ve offered to technically give us your child. I’d think you’d be more invested in the process.”

“I am invested,” she said, a bit defensively. She looked up at them. She shrugged. “I’ve just already made up my mind is all.”

“Just like that?” Albus demanded, skeptical.

Lily nodded firmly. She shared a smile with Scorpius. “Just like that.”

Albus hesitated. “And you know, right, that it’ll be  _ours_? We’ll raise it, it’ll call us…well, we’ll be its parents? You’ll be Auntie Lulu, even if you’re genetically its mum. Are you okay with that?”

“Okay with it? That’s what’s got me sold on the idea.” She set her phone face down on the table. She beamed. “Can you imagine how _lovely_ the baby will be? Half me and half Scorpius…it’s the best genetic combination since Mum and Dad had a baby.”

“Oi!” James complained at once.

Lily relented. “Okay, and James and Nora.”

“Damn right. We’re beautiful. Our babies could be models.”

“We get stopped all the time in muggle London,” Nora nodded.

“Lulu,” Harry said. Lily looked towards her dad. “You’re  _sure_ it wouldn’t be difficult for you? It’d be your first child. I can’t imagine…” Harry trailed off, his eyes meeting James’s. James smiled at him.

“But it won’t  _really_  be; it’d be Albus’s and Scorpius’s. I’m fine with it, honest, Dad. I don’t know if I’m going to have kids, and they  _definitely want_ kids, and I’ve got plenty of E-G-G-S to create them…it makes sense. Plus, you know…” she trailed off. Her cheeks reddened. She looked down at her phone again and avoided their eyes. “It’d be nice. To help.”

James wondered how much of this had to do with the baby dragons that’d died, the baby dragons he knew she felt responsible for. Maybe helping to create life  _would_ help her. It’d be a fitting way for her to feel like she’d atoned for what’d happened before Christmas (even though he personally felt she had no need to). He also didn’t miss the fact that she’d somehow flipped from ‘I’m never having kids ever’ to ‘I don’t know if I’m going to have kids’. James made a mental note to gossip with Nora about that later.

“Obviously anybody can change their mind at any point,” Scorpius said quickly. “We’ll have a long time to think about this and learn about it…” he swallowed hard. “Thank you for even considering it.”

Ginny stood and walked over to stand behind Scorpius’s chair. He smiled as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head.

“You two deserve it,” she told him, her hand moving over to rest on Albus’s shoulder. Albus reached up and gave it a warm squeeze. “And what’s more: you’ll be phenomenal dads.”

“You think so?” Albus asked. James noticed he’d glanced over to Harry, as if the question were really for him. Harry smiled.

“I really, really do, Al,” he admitted. His smile grew. “And more grandbabies are never a bad thing.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Ginny said suddenly. Everybody looked at her. Her eyes had landed on Nora. “Nora, have you talked to your dads about this yet? How are they going to feel about this? Your dad nearly hyperventilates every time you give birth.”

James frowned. Nora’s smile faltered a bit.

“It’s not their decision to make. I’ll talk with them. It’ll be okay.”

“Draco,” Harry remembered suddenly. He looked to Scorpius. “Have you two talked to Draco about this?”

“No!” Scorpius said quickly. “And don’t tell him yet, okay? I don’t want to tell him until it’s actually happened. I don’t want to get his hopes up for nothing, you know?”

“Right,” Ginny said gently. “It’s a bit high stakes for him. Last Malfoy and all.”

“Who would’ve thought it?” Harry mused aloud. He seemed torn between a smile and a disgusted grimace. “My daughter…procreating…with Draco Malfoy’s son.”

“We need to start bets on the child’s temperament  _yesterday_ ,” Ginny hissed to Harry.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Lily said. She reached into her jeans and withdrew  _another_ mobile phone. She slid it across the table; Ginny caught it by instinct before it slid off, but she was looking at it like it might bite her. “Hugo had Avery fix one up for you two. Dad, you still can’t take it into Hogwarts—he could get them to cooperate around moderate levels of magic, but nothing like it’d encounter at Hogwarts—but it’ll work here. This way I don’t have to wait ages for letters. Or for the Ministry to get around to paying for more mirrors to be manufactured…lazy.”

“We’re very busy and stretched thin financially,” James defended the Ministry.

“Bureaucrat,” Lily muttered.

Harry lifted the phone up. “Will you send us photos of the dragons?”

“That’s probably all I’ll do,” Lily admitted. She tapped the phone. “I’m going to be dangerous with this.”

“We’ll all stay in touch about this, yeah?” Albus asked. “The baby thing, I mean.”

“Absolutely,” Nora assured him.

James and Nora rounded their kids up, said their goodbyes, and headed back to their home. They collapsed onto the sofa in the sitting room after getting the kids down for their naps. James yawned and cuddled closer to his wife, content and brimming with steady joy. His wife sighed happily into their kiss.

“This feels right,” she told him. “Like it’s what we’re meant to do.”

James felt his already-bursting heart fill even more. It shouldn’t have been possible, but then again, he and Nora had made it a habit of defying expectations.


	9. I. Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco and Scorpius are harboring secrets from each other. Albus is struggling to find joy in his profession. Delphi's looking for a bird-sitter. The Ministry holds the first of many meetings to try and combat the spread of lime pox. Lily's departure date arrives sooner than anticipated.

“I j-j-just feel as if…as if…I was betrayed.”

The sobbing man in front of him succumbed to another round of violent, shoulder-shaking sobs. Draco pursed his lips politely and looked down at his folded hands. He took his time considering the situation before he replied.

“Your wife can’t sign off on it on her own. I know it seems grim, but nobody can force you to give up your child. If she _has_ taken him up to the Ministry, the head of Social Relations and Services won’t remove him from the home without the consent of _both_ parents—and even then he’ll attempt to put your family through counseling programs to remedy the problem versus actually removing the child. Have you been to the Ministry today?”

“Y-Yes! He’s in meetings all day long, the head of the department, and I _know_ she’s going to cheat her way up in the queue and she’s going to abandon our son!”

Draco summoned a box of tissues from the bookshelf behind his desk. It landed neatly in front of the man. He pulled two free and blew his nose loudly.

“As I said, there is no way she can sign off _your_ custody of _your_ child. Go back home and wait—if she’s really gone up there with your son, you’ll be contacted first, as you’re now his primary caregiver. Nobody is going to take your child from you unless you want him to be.”

“I d-don’t care if he’s a squib. At first, when we found out, I thought that I did…I was so angry. But he’s my baby!”

Draco felt the back of his throat prickle. He thought of the first time he held Scorpius. The way his heart had opened up—he had never in his life felt anything like that. Had never in his life felt affection or _purpose_ like that before. He had never felt so loved, so important. And his tiny, fragile son, with his eyelids so pale that Draco could see tiny purple veins beneath, his hair so white-blond that it appeared to sparkle beneath the light, his hand that could wrap entirely around Draco’s thumb…he couldn’t imagine what he’d do if somebody tried to take him away. He couldn’t imagine caring if somebody said ‘he’s a squib’. He was certain, in the end, he would’ve replied: ‘No, he’s Scorpius’.

Draco opened the top drawer and thumbed through the rows of contact cards. He picked the most gentle-hearted counselor they had. This man didn’t need tough love.

“Here.” He offered the card to the new father. “This counselor is on the P-wing, third door on the left. Go speak with her. I’ll get in contact with Potter for you before your wife can.” The man took the card with trembling hands. Draco peered seriously at him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“H-He’s booked ‘til Thursday,” the man said weakly.

“Not for me. He’s my…well, I’m actually not sure what the official title is…but his brother’s my son-in-law,” Draco reminded him. There weren’t many people in their world who didn’t know, but every now and then he stumbled upon somebody who was so in their own head that they weren’t even close to up to date with current events. “I can speak with him during the lunch hour.”

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes now on the contact card. He stood. “You’ll bring my son here?”

“I’ll send you to the department to retrieve him if he’s already been dropped off,” Draco reassured him. “If he hasn’t, I’ll set up an appointment with Potter for you.”

Draco checked his wristwatch after the man had gone. Nearly lunch time. He felt his heart jolt; his stomach felt weirdly bubbly as he thought about his lunch plans. He smiled. He could hardly contain his excitement as he turned around in his chair to face the mirror on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf. He inspected his reflection carefully. He forced a toothy smile and made sure no food had gotten stuck in his teeth. He was combing through his hair—his hands trembling just a bit in his anticipation—when he heard a quick knock on his office door. Assuming it was another WWEU member coming in to hold his lunch hour up, he turned around with a frown. He found his son-in-law in the doorway, his frown nearly identical to Draco’s.

“Draco,” Albus began tiredly. He draped his coat over the back of one of the chairs in front of Draco’s desk. Draco was peering at him in concern as he fell down into it with a sigh. Albus met his eyes. “I’d quite like a Bordeaux holiday.”

Having expected something a bit more dramatic, Draco couldn’t help but snort. Albus propped his elbow up on the arm of the chair and rested his chin in his hand, looking every bit tired and dejected. He heaved a deep sigh. Draco felt both concerned and amused.

“What’s happened? Are you and Scorpius bickering over furniture again?”

“No, I let him have his five-hundred galleon rug…still think it’s excessive, mind you, but it makes him happy, so we’ve got a rug the price of a tiny island in our flat.”

“He gets that from Astoria. Wasn’t fussy about much, but decorating…she’d have gutted the Manor if my parents—…” Draco broke off abruptly, an odd tangle of resentment and longing overtaking his heart. He cleared his throat gruffly. “I can sympathize with you, I mean.”

Albus looked down at his lap awkwardly. Draco tried not to mention his parents as a rule, but every now and then he slipped up, and Albus never seemed to know how to handle it when he did. Draco tried to pave over the awkwardness.

“Did you come by to get the Bordeaux home keys? You know you can just go to the Manor and get them whenever you like; they’re in my study hanging with all the other keys,” he reminded him.

Albus crossed his arms sulkily. “I can’t _really_ go to France this weekend. I’m working all day Saturday.”

“Ah,” Draco said. “Are you being punished for something?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I think Young’s still cross with me for taking off for Evvie and Ben’s wedding. _Even though_ —”

“—you asked off well in advance and followed all regulations by the book,” Draco completed for him.

Albus appeared a bit sheepish. “Sorry. I know I’ve complained about this a lot.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Draco said. He tried to calculate the best thing to say to make Albus understand that he liked when he vented to him. “I don’t mind.”

The corners of Albus’s mouth quirked up in a small smile. Another silence fell over them.

“Did you—”

“Do you—”

They both stopped. After a brief pause, Draco said: “You first.”

“Do you have lunch plans? Scorpius and I were going to go to the Three Broomsticks but he got held up at work—another baby with Troll Fever— so I thought I’d come by and see if you wanted to. You know. Go to Three Broomsticks. Have a pint or whatever. Scorp might join us later.”

Draco hesitated. He didn’t want to tell his son-in-law no, because he didn’t want him to think that he didn’t want to spend time with him (he did), but he was supposed to go somewhere else during his lunch break…though, his previous plans were _also_ in Hogsmeade, so he could go to lunch with Albus and _then_ go where he’d intended originally…

“Yes, I’d like that. Let’s 'have a pint or whatever,'” Draco decided.

Albus grinned. “Brilliant! I’m _starving_.” He stood and grabbed his coat off the back of the chair. Draco stood and began gathering his own items—coat, a zipped bag containing carefully packaged herbs from the gardens surrounding Malfoy Manor, the notes he’d taken during the tearful father’s visit to drop off to James—while Albus set at once for the door. “ _Oh_ , can we go by the farmer’s market afterwards? I won’t be able to make our usual trip this Saturday because of my bloody work schedule. We’re running low on food at the moment; I had to make cheese and onion sandwiches for dinner last night.”

Draco smiled. His heart warmed. “I’ll go to the farmer’s market anytime you like,” he admitted. “The elves were just complaining that we’re low on produce at the Manor, too. We can go by after we eat.”

Albus looked up at him as they left Draco’s office. “Did you hear that they’ve added in an ‘exotic produce’ stand?”

Draco’s eyes widened. “What? Seriously? When?”

“Just this week! Michael told me yesterday—he was in my office reporting a theft. Somebody stole every single banana from the market on Monday.”

Draco furrowed his brow. “What on earth would somebody do with that many bananas?”

“Make a few smoothies with some of them, eat some plain…find other uses for them…who knows, really? We think the thief had a cheap invisibility cloak on because hardly anybody…saw…him…”

Albus gradually trailed off. Draco had been looking at him as they spoke, but as Albus's eyes narrowed slightly, he turned his gaze in the direction Albus was looking. _Ah_.

“Cocking slut!!” Evangeline the parrot greeted. Typical.

“Hello, Delphi,” Draco said as they approached. He pointed at the bird. “I thought I said no pets within the WWEU?”

Albus and Delphi were sharing an uneasy glance. She came to a stop in front of them.

“She’s not a pet,” Delphi finally said, her eyes still on Albus. “She's practically a child. Hello, Albus."

“Hi,” Albus said, his voice a bit stiff. He jumped as Evangeline spread her colorful wings; he looked extremely uncomfortable as the bird soared over to perch on his shoulder. He shot nervous looks at her sharp beak from the corner of his eye.

“How are you?” asked Delphi.

“Fine. How are you?”

“Good. Draco, I need a favor,” Delphi said, turning back to him.

She was his cousin, one of the last people on the planet he shared blood with, but he knew what she was going to ask, and he did not want to say yes. He waited in dread for her to continue.

“Could you take Evangeline for the night? I was asked to fill in and work the nightshift and I can’t leave her alone in the flat; she has to be in her cage when she’s left unattended for that long and she gets so lonely and stressed in there that she picks out her feathers. I would've said no, but I'm supposed to start working with the company fulltime in February, and I don't want to seem unreliable. I've already got a dubious record since I have no work experience under my fake name, so I really need to do this.”

Draco turned his eyes back to the bird. She was lightly nipping at Albus’s hair in the same way she often groomed her own feathers; Albus had his eyes screwed tightly and was standing so tensely that he looked poised to take off running at any moment. Draco couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his son-in-law so uneasy. Possibly during the dance lessons he’d made Albus and Scorpius take before the wedding.

“Er…well…” Draco began. He took in his cousin’s pleading eyes. He felt guilt gnawing at his gut. He didn’t _want_ to say no, but he didn’t want to say yes, either. The peacocks always tried to go for Evangeline; even if he put her in a carrier he had to outrun the peacocks to make it to the door (animals weren't supposed to apparate or use the Floo for safety reasons.) And he often lost her in Malfoy Manor, too, as her wings weren’t clipped and she could fly as she pleased…the last time she was over she’d flown straight into one of the tall, multi-story windows…then there was the incessant squawking and talking and screaming…no, he could always tell Delphi it wasn’t safe for Evangeline at the Manor…

“Oh, hey,” Albus said suddenly, relieved. The moderate warmness to his tone told Draco he wasn’t talking to Delphi. Sure enough, when Draco turned to follow his gaze, he spotted Caden approaching them. His arms were burdened with files, so Draco guessed he was on his way back to his office from the WWEU archives. He joined their group and beamed brightly, hastily shoving the files down into the bag hanging from his shoulder.

“Evangeline gets an outing,” Caden said, before even greeting them. Draco struggled not to laugh; for some reason, it made him think of a picture book he’d read Scorpius when he was younger ( _Salazar Gets a Snake_ ). “Lucky birdy you are, Evangeline.”

Evangeline wasted no time flying over to Caden. He held out his arm for her. Once she perched on his forearm, he scratched gently at her neck feathers, entirely comfortable and affectionate with the alarming creature. Draco guessed parrots weren’t so intimidating when you regularly interacted with your girlfriend’s man-eating beasts.

Albus glanced at Draco. Draco met his eyes. Albus furrowed his brow. _Do you want to watch the bird?_ Draco shook his head once. _I don’t want to watch the bloody bird_.

“Hey, Delphi,” Albus said, turning back to the woman. “Draco was going to…help Scorpius and I paint tonight. But what if Caden watched the bird?”

Draco was partially humiliated by Albus’s forwardness; he couldn’t imagine anything ruder than offering up somebody else for pet-sitting without even asking that person first. But Caden had perked up.

“You need somebody to watch Evangeline, Delphi? How long?” he asked.

“Not for very long,” Delphi said quickly, an edge of desperation to her voice. “I have to work the night-shift and I can’t leave her locked up in the flat. I could drop her off around nine and collect her by six tomorrow morning.”

“Sure, I’ll watch her,” he agreed. Draco let out a tiny sigh of relief. Albus lunged into Draco’s side and away from Caden as Evangeline suddenly moved towards Albus; she ended up stopping at Caden’s wrist, but Albus still stood close-by Draco’s side. Draco felt abruptly fatherly. He set his hands on Albus’s shoulders and switched spots with him, so he didn’t have to be by the bird.  

“Really? You don’t mind?” Delphi asked Caden.

“Not at all. This’ll really cheer Lily up. Er…I’m not to be blamed for anything she teaches Evangeline, though, okay?”

Delphi sighed. “Yeah, I’ve given up on trying to get her to unlearn all the swearing her first owner taught her. Tell Lily to have fun.”

“She certainly will.”

Draco and Albus said their goodbyes and left the two discussing the specifics of bird-sitting. Draco waited until they were all the way at the end of the hall before speaking.

“Just out of curiosity: why does the parrot frighten you but not the peacocks?” 

Albus shrugged his shoulders. “Well, those are Scorpius’s peacocks, right? That’s _Delphi’s_ parrot. The beaks, too…the parrot’s beak looks like it’d hurt way more.”

Draco laughed. “Those peacocks can do real damage when they want to…ask Scorpius about ‘Dottie’ later. For a laugh. Oh, but make sure he’s not holding any hot beverages when you do. When he does his peacock reenactment he’ll spill it down his front.”

Albus stopped dead in his tracks. He reached up and grabbed onto Draco’s arm, pulling him to a stop. His stare was oddly intense.

“There’s a _peacock reenactment_?” he demanded.

Draco furrowed his brow. “Yeah, of course…it’s Scorpius.”

“There’s a peacock reenactment and nobody thought to tell me this until _now_? Oh, this is brilliant…” he rubbed his hands together as he laughed fondly. “Tonight will be dinner _and_ a show.”

Draco was amused as he took in his son-in-law’s mischievous expression. He was reminded forcefully of Lily for a moment; she’d had an expression nearly identical to that yesterday as she traveled the halls of the WWEU. Draco had sent her home because of it; he knew what that look meant. It always humored him when he saw bits and pieces of the Potter siblings reflected in each other. It had once made him feel sad (he’d always wanted Scorpius to have what he hadn’t: siblings) but now it made him feel a weird, warm feeling in his chest. Sort of like the feeling his family had always given him. He guessed he liked the knowledge that Scorpius had married into a big family. It was what he'd always wanted.

“You know,” Draco said, as they both resumed walking. “You’re a lot like your sister.”

“ _Oi_!” Albus said at once, insulted.

“What? You are. I didn’t say that was a bad thing.”

“Okay, then _you’re_ a lot like your cousin Delphi’s mum!”

“Hey!” Draco said.

“‘I didn’t say it was a bad thing!’” Albus mocked.

Draco had a smiling tugging at the corners of his lips. “You can’t seriously be comparing Lily Potter to Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“Have _you_ ever had to listen to Lily graphically shagging somebody on Christmas Eve? No? Well, it’s evil incarnate.”

Draco grimaced. “So _that’s_ why Scorpius told me I should be glad I had to work that day.”

“If you ever need blackmail on your employee, just ask. I’ve heard and seen more than anybody should ever have to. Just the other day I was trying to help Lily with her new muggle mobile and I saw—”

“No, that’s quite all right,” Draco interrupted firmly. “I understand and I thank you for your silence on that particular topic.”

They stepped into the massive entrance hall (the only place in the building where apparition was allowed).

“Still,” Albus persisted. He peered seriously at Draco. His eyes looked so much like Harry’s for a moment that Draco did a double-take. “You ought to put surveillance measures in Caden’s office.”

“No, thank you,” Draco denied. “If I want to have nightmares, all I’ve got to do is think about my childhood. It’s cheaper and easier. Three Broomsticks?”

“Three Broomsticks,” Albus agreed.

* * *

 

They ordered drinks while they mulled over what to order for lunch. Draco didn’t particularly like pub food (or any food that wasn’t cooked in the Manor, really), but he figured there was only so much damage somebody could do to roast chicken. He watched his son-in-law peruse the menu for a moment.

“You’re just going to get fish and chips again, aren’t you?” Draco finally asked.

Albus dropped the menu to the table at once. “Yeah, I don’t know why I always look at the menu.”

“Scorpius says you’re a bit…adventurous in your own kitchen lately,” Draco said, struggling not to laugh.

Albus grimaced. “I’m guessing he mentioned the goat cheese and sweet potato soufflés.”

“Right.”

“They actually tasted fairly good…the bits that didn’t…explode everywhere. Don’t tell my dad. I told him they were a success.”

Draco snorted. “No, I won’t tell your dad, don’t worry about that.”

“Thanks. He told me my recipe wouldn’t work right and I ignored him. Don’t want him to say ‘I told you so.'"

“Fair enough,” Draco nodded. He quickly searched for something to say next. Awkward silences pained him. “How was the zoo? That was yesterday, right?”

“Henry vomited all over Scorpius’s trousers.”

Draco had just taken a sip of his red wine. At that, he choked; his eyes burned with pain as he inhaled the wine down the wrong way. He sputtered into his napkin and struggled to catch his breath. Once he’d regained the ability to breathe, he looked back up at Albus.

“ _What_? Is Henry okay?” A pause. Draco winced. “Scorpius wasn’t wearing his—”

“Brand new trousers from Paris, yep. I tried to talk to him about it, I did…I said ‘Scorpius, do you really think silk trousers are the best choice for a trip to the muggle zoo?’ and he said ‘yes, absolutely, they’re very breathable’, and, well, they _were_ rather nice on him so— er. Yeah, so he wore them. And it was fine up until Henry started whining about his tummy…he got all green and clammy…Scorpius turned into Healer Scorpius and the next thing we knew…he exploded. Henry did. Partially digested fish and chips _everywhere._ Soon after…Evra as well.”

“Oh no,” Draco winced.

“Oh yes. All over the Ministry car I borrowed. Must’ve been the fish; both she and Henry had it. Finnigan was feeling a bit boastful, I think. He had some weird bean thing.”

Draco pressed his palm over his mouth. He felt a bit nauseated. “Scorpius’s trousers?”

“Dead. Deader than dead. We had to put them in one of Delilah’s nappy bags…Scorpius spent the rest of the day in a pair of joggers from the aquarium shop.” Albus smirked. “They said ‘land of the lions’ on the bum. Finnigan’s not likely to let him forget it.” 

“Oh, he was waiting for those trousers for _ages_ ,” Draco frowned. “I’ll contact the shop tonight. I’m sure something can be done…”

While he dug the planner Hermione had given him for Christmas from his bag, the waitress appeared with their food. Draco felt his stomach churn at the sight of Albus’s fish and chips. He hadn’t seen the vomiting event, but even hearing about it made him take offense to the sight. Albus seemed remarkably all right with it. He dug into his lunch without any deficient in his enthusiasm. Draco made a note to contact the shop, put his planner back into his bag, and stared distastefully at his soggy chips. They looked like they were taking a bath in oil.

“Anyway,” Albus continued, his mouth still slightly full. Draco was reminded that he was part-Weasley. “James and Nora nearly had kittens when we brought the kids back. Granted, we did bring half of them back smelling of sick and too weak to walk, but it wasn’t our fault.”

“Of course not,” Draco agreed. “I’m guessing you and Scorpius ate something different?”

“Scorpius, yes. Me, no, actually…I think I’ve just got a stomach of steel.” Albus shrugged. “So are you going to that big meeting this evening?”

Draco and Albus spent the rest of lunch discussing the Ministry meeting that night. Once Draco had choked down as much of his disgusting lunch as he could stomach, they went together to the newly-instated farmer’s market at the end of Hogsmeade. They spent an hour picking through the tables together. Draco helped Albus fine-tune some of his slightly-eccentric recipes (something that called for a good amount of deliberation at each stand). By the time they went their separate ways—Albus back home to put his produce away and then back to work, Draco towards the apothecary, heavy bags in hand—Draco was feeling surprisingly cheerful. He was fond of his son-in-law. Sometimes, on days like this, he felt more like a son than an in-law.

He was already smiling when he stepped into St. John’s Fort. The sight of the woman behind the counter only made his smile grow.

“Hi,” he blurted.

Gemma’s smile brought her entire face to life. For a moment, Draco didn’t do much but stand there stupidly, his heart jolting oddly. His cheeks flushed. Words seemed to escape him, and for somebody who had found redemption in words, had ultimately made words and communication his profession, that felt a bit disarming.

“Hello, Draco. I had a dream about you last night,” Gemma greeted.

Draco’s lips parted slightly. For a moment, all he could think about were all the dreams he’d had about _her_. Were they at this point already? Should he say something flirty back? Would it be too much?

“Yeah?” he managed to squeak.

“You helped me fix the cauldron in the back. It must’ve been a prophetic dream.”

Her smirk made him get that warm, tingly feeling in his stomach like he was a teenager again. He approached the till.

“Is this your underhanded way of asking me to fix the cauldron, Gemma Farley?” Draco teased.

She leaned over the counter and propped her elbows up on the polished surface. She looked endearingly beautiful as she rested her chin in her palms. Her light eyes bore into his; the corners of her dark lips quirked up into a cheeky grin. “Is it working?”

Draco leaned against the front of the counter. “A bit. I suppose one should always help their elders.”

Her eyes danced as she laughed. “Pardon _you_ ,” she said. She snatched a folded bit of parchment from a basket near her left elbow and lightly smacked Draco’s shoulder with it. “I’m only six years older than you…that hardly qualifies me as your _elder_!”

“You wear your six extra years better than I wear all forty-seven of mine,” Draco admitted.

Her expression softened. Draco studied the fine lines beside her eyes and her laughter lines with mounting affection; instead of aging her, they made her look more _alive_ to him, more alluring. Maybe it was because he’d never gotten to see Astoria age. Maybe it was because she seemed so vibrant and vivacious. No matter the reasons, he found her terribly beautiful, and rightly so: she was undeniably a gorgeous woman. But it was more than that. She had a way of captivating his attention…he hadn’t felt like that since he’d first met Astoria. It made him feel a bit punch-drunk at times.

Gemma’s eyes locked on his. He sank into them. “Are you flirting with me, Draco?”

Draco’s eyes drifted down to her lips. What if he kissed her? It’d been so long since he’d kissed anybody. Would she want him to kiss her?

“What if I am?” he murmured back.

She leaned closer. “I’d say it’s about time.”

He could feel her breath against his lips. His heart was pounding. He wanted so terribly to lean in and kiss her, to set his hand against her face, to show her how much he fancied her. But he was scared. He mentally swore at himself as he backed up slightly, red-faced and already regretful.

“I, uh, brought this. For you.” He lifted the bag full of herbs. Gemma’s skin was a bit pinker as she accepted the bag. She cleared her throat gently as she opened it and peered at the contents. Draco knew she probably hadn’t sold the herbs he’d brought her last week yet, but he couldn’t help himself; he wanted to see her every day, but he always felt like he needed an excuse, and this was the perfect one. Even if it was becoming a bit excessive.

Gemma looked back at him.  “These are in brilliant condition. How shall I pay you?”

“Oh, no, please, I don’t want to be paid—”

“Money, vouchers, or a date?”

Draco tugged nervously at his cloak. He could hear his own racing pulse. Gemma waited patiently, as poised and confident as ever. As ladylike and elegant as ever. God, he wanted to kiss her.

“A date,” he decided.

Her wink was deliberate, controlled, and incredibly sexy. “You’ll get more value from the date.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. He felt lighter somehow. He was worried his grin looked a bit stupid, so he fought it from his face. “Er…would you like to show me the cauldron?”

“Right, sure,” she said. She walked around the counter. Her fingers were soft as they gently grasped onto Draco’s. “Follow me.”

He trailed after her towards a mahogany door. It opened up and sloped downwards towards a basement. It was an echoing room, with hundreds upon hundreds of rows of herbs and flowers hanging from the ceiling. There were tables holding magical plant presses to the left, tables for chopping and sorting in the middle, and along the right wall, ten massive golden cauldrons. Gemma headed straight towards the middle cauldron, sitting slightly slanted due to a missing leg.

“I can’t fill it very high,” Gemma told him. “Because of the way it tilts.”

“What happened to it?” Draco wondered. He kneeled down and touched the gold. He closed his eyes. The properties still felt very pure; he could easily transmute a similar-size pewter cauldron leg into gold and merge it back into place.

“It’s an old cauldron…it was my dad’s at school. The leg was a casualty to a family dispute a few decades back. Can you fix it?”

Something in her tone told Draco to leave the topic of family disputes alone. He knew things were tense in her family; they’d had a squib birth long before it was as common as it was now, and being a mostly-pureblood, Slytherin line, it was understandably an irreparable scandal. Draco had always gotten the impression that Gemma somewhat resented her sister for being a squib, though he wasn’t sure whether that was _because_ she was a squib or because her being a squib had caused so much strife in their family. 

“Easily. I can come by tomorrow with a replacement leg,” Draco told her.

Her hand settled on his shoulder. “You’re a star, Draco Malfoy.”

He grinned. He saw his own distorted reflection in the dinged-up gold. He looked happy. He _felt_ happy. He wanted to tell her how momentous that was—him, happy—but didn’t want to make things awkward.

“Where are you taking this star for our date?” he heard himself ask.

She arched a dark eyebrow. “Well, I’m going to surprise you, of course.”

Draco’s face was sore from smiling by the time he left Hogsmeade.

* * *

 

The queue for James’s office was backed up to the lifts. Draco pushed his way through the groups of people as politely as possible, his brow furrowed in confusion. James hardly ever had a spare moment (from what Draco could tell), but this seemed to be something entirely different. He walked past the grumbling, impatient parents and their squirming, crying kids towards the reception desk. James’s receptionist, Julio, looked about two seconds away from dropping. His desk was littered in half-opened memos with nearly ten still circling his head. He was currently getting an irate earful from a middle-aged mother with triplets and looked moments away from tears. Draco felt less guilty about stepping in front of her than he would have somebody being polite.

“Malfoy! Oh, thank God,” Julio said at once. He collapsed down into his chair. “Please tell me they sent you to calm this lot down. I’ve been calling for PR blokes or—or counselors or hypnotists or sodding…dragon stunners!”

“Actually…I was here to…” Draco watched Julio’s expression begin to plummet. He didn’t have the heart to continue. “Yes, I’m here to sort this out. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

“Word has somehow spread that the Ministry is having a closed meeting about the squib births. Everybody’s either cross that they can’t sit in and believe there’s some sort of conspiracy, panicked that the government’s going to either force them to give up or keep their squib kids, or, in that woman’s case—” he pointed at the triplets’ mother— “unhappy with the amount of aid she’s getting monthly. She picked a horrible day to come down here to fight that battle.”

“No kidding,” Draco agreed, his eyes scanning over the irate parents. He sucked in a deep breath. Okay. Calming parents was always the most difficult thing to do, but he knew getting nervous would only make it that much harder. He reached down and picked up the ceramic frog mug Julio kept his quills in. He lifted a toad paperweight and tapped it against the frog. When that failed to immediately get everybody’s attention, he whistled loudly. Gradually, silence fell over the hall.

“I’m from the Wizarding World Equality Union. I understand that everybody has their grievances, but you have to remember that Mr. Potter is only one person; he can only see one person at a time. Now, if you’re here because you want to demand a place at tonight’s meeting, please form a queue to my left. If you’re here with concerns about your non-magical child, please form a queue right here in the center. If you’re here for an unrelated reason, please form a queue to my right.”

Draco waited as everybody shuffled into place. Soon, a line backing nearly to the lifts was in place to his left, one nearly half that size in the center, and a two-person line to his right. Draco set his bag on the edge of Julio’s desk and withdrew his most expensive-looking notebook. He opened it to a random page.

“I’ve started a list with the Minister,” he lied smoothly. “We’re taking names down for those who want to be added to our next meeting. This first meeting is merely a formality; you’ll have a chance to make your voices heard. Now…” Draco snagged a self-inking quill from Julio’s desk. In record-time, he drew lines and made a quick chart. “Please write your name, your address, and any concerns, opinions, or thoughts you’d like mentioned at this first meeting. I’ll have one of my employees there tonight to speak on your behalf.”

He set the notebook down on the desk facing the appropriate queue, and then he turned to the center line. He spotted a woman with a newborn baby right in the middle. He assumed it was the wife of the man who’d been to see him that morning.

“Who here is concerned about their child being taken away without their consent?”

Three hands rose into the air.

“Don’t be. Mr. Potter would literally rather swallow this jar of ink here than do that. He’s got abandoned children coming out of his ears; he’s not going to permit any child to be taken from their homes.”

“But we heard the Ministry is planning on taking our non-magical children away and putting them in Muggle homes and we won’t ever be able to see them again and—!”

Draco cut off the hysterical woman. “There’s no truth to that. I understand that you’re nervous, but all Mr. Potter is going to tell you is exactly what I just did. It’s best for you to go home. Feel free to step into that queue and add your concerns to the list, though, if you’d like.”

Reluctantly, two out of three headed towards the lifts. One nervous, mousy-looking mother stepped into the other queue. Draco took a moment to inhale deeply.

“Okay. Who’s here to surrender their child?”

Two hands rose.

“Who has their child’s other legal parent here with them to sign off on it?”

Two hands fell.

“You’ll need to leave. Mr. Potter can’t do anything without both legal guardians present. If you try to see him now, all he’ll be able to do is send your child right back home to their other parent.”

The woman with the baby looked close to tears. The other person who’d raised their hand, a man in his late thirties, crossed his arms.

“What if your ex-wife has done a runner and left you with a kid you didn’t even know you had who’s _seriously_ disturbed and has been crying for three days straight and refuses to eat?”

Draco glanced back at Julio, alarmed. Julio didn’t appear surprised in the slightest; Draco guessed he heard things much worse than that on a daily basis.

“Er…come stand up here with me,” Draco finally said.

The man walked up and did as he was told. Draco looked at the five people remaining in the center queue. The common factor between all of them was pregnancy.

“Yes?” Draco asked them. “One at a time, you first.”

He gestured towards the woman closest to the front of the queue. She took in a deep breath and set a palm on her bulbous stomach. “We’ve heard that the Ministry knows what’s causing this and can do tests. I want my baby tested!”

Murmurs of agreement spread down the line.

“There’s an idea. Write it down on the suggestions list,” Draco said.

“No, we want a test _now_!”

“Does this look like St. Mungo’s to you?” Draco demanded. “Please add it to the suggestions list.”

He faced his last queue. He nodded at the mother with the triplets. She burst at once.

“I can hardly afford to feed this lot and my landlord’s threatened to evict us if Crispin doesn’t stop setting fires only he can’t _help it_ , it’s his magic, you see, and I’ve tried putting him to bed swaddled up like an infant but that only makes his accidental magic _worse_ and—”

Draco eyed the eight-year-old child, alarmed. In his opinion, it wasn’t swaddling once the child reached six months: it was a straight-jacket.

“—Ira keeps vanishing all the food that she doesn’t like and at first it was being cheeky-like but now she can’t control it and she’s lost a stone and _your son,_ Mr. Malfoy, told me if she doesn’t start gaining weight he’d have to report me!!”

“Well, I’m sure my son only has Ira's best interests at heart—”

“To bloody top it off, Sorrell here has run away from home _ten times_ this week, and the last time she got knocked over by a muggle car or what’s-you-call-it—”

“Sorry, what?!”

“—Dusted her right off, I did, and I healed most of her bones, but I’m at my wits end with these bloody kids, and I’ve got half a mind to drop them at Azkaban to be with their dad— he was done in for animal experimentation but he’s just scientific in the mind is all—”

“Okay…you come stand up here with me as well,” Draco said, alarmed. He looked to the very last person. “Yes?”

It was a young father holding the hand of a tiny child, perhaps a little over a year. He looked absolutely alarmed.

“I just need a couple of nappies. I’m skint.”

Draco glanced back at Julio. He was already leaving his desk. He gestured towards the supply cupboard.

“Go with Julio,” Draco said.

The man seemed eager to get away from the mum with triplets. He lifted his child up and headed after Julio. Draco stood and waited until everybody in the remaining queue had written their complaints down in his notebook. There were only three people left when a familiar face came hurrying from the lifts pushing a pram.

“Hello, Nora,” Draco greeted. She’d been making a determined beeline to James’s office door, but at that, she turned. She smiled at him.

“Oh, hello, Draco! How are you? Here for James?”

“Yes…well…sort of,” Draco admitted. He leaned over and peeked into the pram. He smiled at Delilah; she kicked her chubby legs happily and smiled back. Draco straightened. “I heard about Henry and Evra. How are they?”

“Vomiting their guts up. Harry’s got Evra and Dean has Henry,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “They’re probably all at St. Mungo’s with Scorpius right now, actually.” She leaned over the pram and reached in to tickle her daughter’s stomach. “And Delilah’s been at the bank with Mummy driving the goblins mad. Isn’t that right?”

Delilah giggled happily.

“Finnigan?” Draco wondered if Albus had left work early to watch him. Maybe he could swing by…help Albus watch Finnigan while he prepared dinner…wait around until Scorpius returned…then he could tell Scorpius about his date…no, maybe not yet. He wasn’t sure how his son would feel. Wasn’t even sure if he’d like Gemma. Though, to be fair, there weren’t many people Scorpius didn’t like…

“With his highly-esteemed auntie at Aster Boot’s shop, you know in Diagon Alley? She’s doing this new anti-poaching line…they said Finnigan could help get things ready for their big reveal tomorrow, and he’ll have a great time, but we’ll _all_ have to pay for it…he’ll be taking about the evils of poaching up until the next decade, mark my words. Next thing James and I know he’ll be running around starkers, convinced the cotton was _stolen_ from the plants…”

Draco snorted as Nora sighed.

“Anyway, I won’t keep you,” she said. She nodded towards James’s office, but before she could push the pram forward, the door _finally_ opened. A furious looking woman stamped out. She made straight for the lifts; a heartbroken cry followed after her.

“MUMMY! MUMMY, NO! MUMMY, COME BACK!”

Draco’s stomach churned as a little girl tried to run after her mum. James quickly lifted her up into his arms, his face shadowed with pain. The little girl wrapped her arms around his neck and wept hard into his shoulder. Draco watched as Nora approached them. She and James shared a few whispered words, she nodded, James gently turned the child around and whispered something to her, and then the little girl dove for Nora’s arms. Nora accepted her warmly, her hand rubbing comforting circles into her back. James leaned in and kissed his wife, took the pram from her, and watched after her longingly as she left the department. James spotted Draco as he pulled Delilah from the pram.

“Draco, hi,” he said, surprised. He kissed Delilah’s cheek and offered Draco a wane smile. “Come in. Have you been waiting long?” He noticed the people sitting along the far wall (the mother with triplets and the man who’d had the child he’d never met dropped off at his doorstep). “I’ll be with you in less than five minutes, I promise. Thank you for your patience. You can let your children go play in the playroom, it’s just through there; there’s tea and coffee for the parents as well. Julio can show you.”

Draco followed James into his office. James shut the door behind them and kicked a few wayward toys out of the way to make a path towards his desk. He bent over at the waist and gathered toys as he walked towards his seat.

“Sorry,” he said, “Aurora was playing while I was chatting with her mum…”

James appeared flustered as he stood, nearly ten toys clutched in his arms. Four slipped and fell back down onto the floor. Delilah leaned forward and started gnawing on the ear of a stuffed bear. James looked down at the four on the floor, and before Draco could do anything, his eyes filled with tears. _Oh no_.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” James repeated, humiliated. He lowered his face and hid in into Delilah’s hair. She reached up unsteadily and smacked at his face. She pulled at his earlobe a moment later. James hardly seemed to notice. Draco hovered awkwardly by the door.

“No, it’s all right,” he finally said. “If it’s been like it was when I arrived all day long, I’d be feeling frustrated, as well.”

It was easy to forget just how young James was. He carried himself with such confidence that Draco hardly ever questioned the fact that he’d only been a teenage father fresh out of Hogwarts when he’d landed the responsibility of an entire department. Looking at him now, though, sniffling into his baby daughter’s curls, Draco felt an odd urge to protect the young man. He knew what it was like to be an overwhelmed father, at any rate.

“I can’t stand it sometimes,” James admitted. “The parents who don’t care about their children. I just want them to love their kids. Why can’t I make them love their kids?”

Draco frowned. He didn’t have the answer to that. James stepped over the fallen toys and collapsed into the chair behind his desk. He sat Delilah on his lap and rubbed his teary eyes.

“We’ve got more abandoned kids than foster families now. I’ve sent Aurora with Nora. She’ll have to stay with us. And I don’t mind taking her in, honest, but it breaks my heart. All these kids being thrown away like something you give away for free during a sodding car boot sale. How are they meant to cope with that? They’re just little angels. That’s too much for even an adult to deal with.”

“Kids are resilient, that I know for certain,” Draco said. He walked over and sat in front of the desk. “More resilient than adults in many ways.”

“I’m sorry for unloading all of this on you, it’s not professional and—”

“Stop apologizing, will you? It’s all right. You’ve got a stressful job. Anyway, I came to talk to you about a problem a Union member brought to my attention this morning, but I’ve sorted it for now. You’ve got two people out there in serious need of every variety of assistance. I suppose I’ll see you tonight, at the meeting?”

James kneaded tiredly over his temples. “Yes. I think Evvie, Lily, Rose, and I are going for a drink right beforehand if you want to join us. I think we’ll all need it.”

Draco considered that. “Is Hermione going?”

“I don't think so. I wish my parents were going to the meeting,” he admitted. “Only department heads and specialists, though.”

Draco furrowed his brow. “I got an invite and I’m not a ‘specialist’… _Harry_ didn’t?”

“You’re invited as a specialist, though, aren’t you? Equality and all that,” James pointed out. “I wish they’d gotten Uncle Charlie as their dragon specialist, but he’s back in Romania and Lily’s on hand and we need somebody who can fully explain lime pox—”

“Sorry? Lily’s going to the meeting?”

“Yes. I said that before, sorry, thought you heard.”

Draco was torn. On the one hand, he’d seen Lily Potter in ‘dragon mode’ on a few other occasions, and she was remarkably poised, confident, and clear-headed. And on the other, he’d seen Lily Potter being Lily Potter, and he wasn’t sure her quick temper would be good in a meeting that was already going to reduce the meekest of them to screaming.

“Yeah…I might bring Caden along with me, then. To help keep her in check,” Draco decided. “I’ll speak with Hermione about it.”

“Not a bad idea, Draco.”

Draco collected his notebook from the receptionist’s desk, managed to catch Hermione right before she walked into a meeting, and returned to the WWEU with his request approved. He ventured to Caden’s office first. He knocked once and peeked in. At first, he thought Caden was with a client because there was a young man sat in front of the desk complaining loudly, but he realized after a moment that that person was Caden’s dormmate from Hogwarts.

“Caden,” Draco began, exasperated. Pierce Zabini turned around and offered Draco a half-hearted wave. “Why is it that every single time I come in here you’re entertaining your social circle?”

“That’s an unfair exaggeration, Draco. Not _every_ time. And anyway, Lily’s a paid Union member now, and Zabini’s been for ages.”

“Yes, sure, but what do their visits have to do with the WWEU’s relations with the public?” Draco challenged drily.

Zabini scowled. “I’m here complaining about _your_ Union’s relations with the public, Mr. Malfoy! I came here to speak with somebody yesterday and I was coldly sent away!”

Draco stared at Zabini. “Pierce, just because a descendent of a Dumbledore’s Army member refuses to date you doesn’t mean you’re being discriminated against. I’m not taking anybody to court because some girl won’t let you buy her a drink.”

Zabini glared. Draco refused to look away. Zabini turned back to Caden.

“You see, Caden? This is _exactly_ what I’m talking about. I just don’t feel as if he’s looking out for my interests. He’s ignoring the cruel social discrimination going on out there against all of us! We’re being shunned by our peers and doomed to lonely lives of solitude all for things out of our control! And the very people who are meant to stick up for us don’t even _care_!”

Draco was glad he was so patient.

“So, Caden _Rowle_ , how’s Harry Potter’s daughter?” he asked pointedly, dismantling Zabini’s entire argument with one question.

Zabini opened and closed his mouth wordlessly.

“He’s got a point,” Caden told Zabini. “And anyway, you sound like a bit of a prick.”

Zabini set his hands on the edge of Caden’s desk and pushed himself up from the chair. He pointed at Caden.

“You’ve just managed to nab the dark Potter. Just you wait…when everything goes tits up for you two, you’ll know how _unfairly_ treacherous the dating scene is for people like _us_! And don’t think I’ll pity you!”

Caden didn’t seem concerned. He watched Zabini brush past Draco and storm from the office. Draco pursed his lips against the words he wanted to say.

“I’ve never met somebody who needs a lay as badly as he does,” Caden admitted, voicing what Draco had been thinking. Draco snorted.

“Listen,” Draco said. “Would you be interested in attending the Ministry meeting tonight?”

Caden arched an eyebrow. “As a professional or to look after my girlfriend?”

“I imagine you use many of your professional skills while watching after her. Patience, self-restraint…”

Caden crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I’d be happy to go, but I wish everybody would treat Lily fairly. She’s _brilliant_ at what she does. They won’t find a better or more caring dragonologist to speak on the matter than Lily.”

“Nobody’s arguing over her expertise,” Draco said at once. “Rather, we’re concerned about how she might react when—inevitably—somebody suggests killing all the dragons and erasing all remnants of their existence from our world to combat lime pox.”

Caden hesitated. “Er…well, as I said, I’ll definitely be there.”

“Probably for the best,” Draco said.

Caden nodded. It seemed a bit stiff. After an awkward pause, he asked: “Are you also bringing along Nora and Iset?”

Draco blinked. “Er, no?”

“Mm, perhaps you should. For when somebody suggests killing all the squib babies—that’ll get James—and when somebody suggests exiling all those with lime pox—that’ll get Rose. While you’re at it, bring in Ben for Evvie—for when they suggest exiling _all_ squibs, ‘cause her mum is one—and Ron for Hermione, because the chaos will surely set her over the edge. Actually, might want to bring in somebody to hold everybody’s hand, or we could get a few of those child-leashes.”

Draco realized he was being scolded. He went to say that not everybody in the room had such a fiery temper, but that wasn’t exactly true, either. Caldwell from the Department of Mysteries had once set a table on fire during lunch a few years back.

“Okay, point made,” Draco allowed. Caden still looked cross. It took Draco a second to notice it because he was so good at masking his emotions, but there was no mistaking the way his jaw was clenched.

“How’s she meant to change her ways if everybody treats her like she’s still a teenager? So many people speak to her with that tone—like she’s a joke, like she’s already messed up—before they’ve even given her a chance...often times, like now, before she’s even arrived or said a word! You can’t change if people won’t let you. It’s no wonder she feels like she’s got to lash out half the time. If you were treated every day like you were still the same person you were when you were thirteen or sixteen despite the fact that you’re trying to change, you’d be irritated too. She’s bloody lovely. Clever, funny, bold, strong, _kind_. She’ll give back the kindness she’s given. You’ve just got to understand her. That’s all. And I’m _not_ blinded by love. I’ve actually never seen clearer.”

Draco’s lips had parted in surprise.

“Er…that’s not all aimed at me, is it?” he finally realized.

Caden looked away. “No, sorry. We had lunch with Rose and Hugo.”

“I’m guessing Hugo wasn’t the one, er…not appreciating her?”

“I don’t like the way Rose speaks to her.”

“Right,” Draco said. “Er…”

“Sorry. Merlin, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I’m just incredibly stressed. She's leaving this Saturday and I don’t even know if she’s really in a good enough place for it or if _I’m_ in a good enough place for it and everything is just _really_ bothering me. Perhaps you should get somebody to come look after _me_ tonight,” he muttered. “If you want to fire me, I understand.”

Draco’s lip curled up in amusement. “I’m not going to fire you, Caden.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“You didn’t _yell_. And you’re right about one thing: if everybody treated me the same way they treated me when I was thirteen or sixteen, I _would_ be irritated.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right. We’re…sort of…family. All is forgiven. And, hey. Evangeline will make up for whatever Rose said, right?”

Caden smiled. It seemed a bit tired. “Right.”

* * *

 

Draco finished up at work much later than he'd intended. With his stomach growling and the Ministry meeting in less than an hour, he came to terms with the horrible realization that he’d have to eat somewhere other than the Manor _again_. He thought about popping by Scorpius and Albus’s flat, to see if they were done with dinner, but he didn’t like to tumble into their kitchen unannounced…not since the, er, post-honeymoon celebration he’d accidentally interrupted a year ago. His neck still burned in embarrassment at the memory.

He’d completely forgotten that James, Evvie, Rose, Lily, and Caden were getting drinks beforehand. He wandered into the pub closest to the Ministry, hoping he could get served quickly, only to spot them sitting around a table together. As he approached it to say hello (and to see if they’d invite him to sit so he didn’t have to sit alone), he noticed another familiar face amongst the crowd. His heart skipped two beats. He found himself beaming as he stopped beside the table.

“Hi,” he blurted. “Gemma. Hello.”

Gemma had been in an intense, quiet conversation with her niece, but at that, she looked up. Draco felt his stomach flutter as she immediately smiled back.

“Draco! You’re the one dishing out the surprises now, are you?” she asked, her eyes twinkling.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” he grinned. He could feel everybody’s eyes on them, but he didn’t much care. “Are you coming to the meeting?”

“No! No. I was just reminding my…forgetful niece about a few things.” She shot a stern look at Evvie. Evvie seemed to be fighting hard against the urge to roll her eyes; her right eye twitched from the strain.

“Oh,” Draco said, looking between the two. “That’s…good, I suppose.”

Silence.

“Well, join us!” James urged. He chuckled. “C’mon, right here!” he patted the seat beside his. Draco felt a bit of the tension ease off his chest. He walked over and took the indicated seat. Caden inclined his head at Draco in greeting; Draco nodded back. Remembering what Caden had said, Draco made a point to smile kindly at Lily.

“Hello, Lily,” he greeted. It sounded a bit too formal. Lily shot a confused look up at Caden; he leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth in response.

“Hi,” she finally said. Her suspicion seemed to lessen; she smiled back. “I just saw Scorpius! He was all mopey because he wanted to get lunch with you today, too. A bit jealous of Al, I think.”

Draco felt his heart ache. “Really? I’ll have to go by after the meeting. I never know when he’s off work. Was he home when you saw him?”

“Yeah, he was helping me practice my speech.”

Draco struggled to find something else to say. “Er…how was Finnigan? Nora said you were babysitting him today. How was that?”

“Oh, brilliant. He painted these clever 'save the dragons' posters; Aster's hung them in the shop windows, they're dead cute. Babysitting him is always fun 'cause he’s my favorite--"

“Lily! You can’t say that!” James interrupted, wounded.

“Why not?” she asked, baffled.

“Because! Because you can’t! You can’t have favorites; you have to love them all!”

“I _do_ love them all, Jamie…I just like Finnigan the best.” Lily shrugged. She lifted up her mixed drink and took a tiny sip from her straw. “He gets me.”

Draco shot a look at Gemma from the corner of his eye. Should he try to strike up a conversation? She was still talking intently with her niece, so maybe not…what would he even say, anyway? He suddenly wished he was somewhere else.

“Henry’s my favorite,” Rose admitted.

“ _Rose_!” James gasped as if she’d punched him in the gut.

“Evra is Harry’s,” Rose continued.

“Obviously,” Lily and Caden chorused.

“What about you, James? Which is your favorite?” Lily wondered.

“I—I—I will _not_ answer that!” James sputtered, stricken. “You lot are _horrible_! Just _horrible_!”

“What about you, Caden?” Lily wondered. “Delilah?”

“Delilah,” Caden affirmed. “I love her chubby little legs and her smile. Draco?”

“Don’t you drag me into this,” Draco muttered, his eyes on James’s rapidly-reddening expression.

Lily laughed, delighted. “C’mon, Draco! Who’s your favorite?”

“Who’s my favorite child? Scorpius,” Draco shot back, without missing a beat.

Lily laughed loudly, amused. “Okay, okay—fair play.”

Draco couldn’t help it: he laughed along with them as James’s face turned tomato red.

“It’s okay to have a favorite, you know,” Rose told him. “It’s just psychology. It’s been proven time and time again through loads of studies that parents _do_ have a favorite.”

“I do _not_! I do _not, not, not_! I _don’t_ —”

James’s objections grew dimmer as Draco felt somebody’s foot touch his. He thought it was an accident, but a second later, he felt another light kick. He cleared his throat (his heart was migrating up it at an alarming rate) and looked over towards Gemma. She was ‘listening’ to whatever Evvie was going on about, but her eyes were on Draco. He smiled at her. She smiled back. He felt like a teenager as he hesitantly kicked his foot out gently towards hers. He tapped his foot against the side of her shoe. He did it a few more times as James and Evvie continued on their separate rants.

“—and there is _nothing_ that could _ever_ make me choose one of my babies over another—okay, who’s playing footsie with me?!” James demanded. "I'm incredibly married. You won't find somebody more married than me. Please stop making my feet unfaithful."

Draco’s heart plummeted. He wrenched his foot back so quickly that his heel slammed hard into the leg of his chair. His eyes were watering as he looked back at Gemma. She was choking on withheld laughter. Draco smiled despite his pain and embarrassment. He was glad when a waitress approached.

“Ready to order?” she asked.

Draco choked down another greasy meal, drank a glass of wine, and lingered near the back of the group as everybody rose from the table. Gemma waited, too.

“Not the best aim,” Gemma greeted quietly.

Draco laughed. “I’ll get it right next time.”

“Oh, I hope so.”

He was still smiling as he journeyed into the Ministry and to the conference room. Everybody else was already there; a few people looked to be arguing already. Draco sat in the seat with his name card. One by one, everybody settled down into their rightful seats. Hermione stood.

“First, I’d like to thank all of you for coming in so late. I know we had a variety of different scheduling conflicts during the day. Now, there are a few of you who know very little about what’s going on with the Squib births and some of you that know a lot in specific areas but none in others—this meeting is about getting everybody up to speed. First, we’ll hear from James; he’ll outline the statistics surrounding the magical and nonmagical births in our world, as well as the impact it's having on wizarding families. Next, Wilson and Caldwell—sorry, _Wood_ and Caldwell—will outline in great detail everything they’ve discovered in the Department of Mysteries, including the illness that’s causing the Squib births and how we can test for it. Afterwards, Lily will describe where this illness came from and the larger political and social impacts of that cause. Our Lead Healer, Greene, will then explain the effects of this illness on the human body, as well as signs and symptoms and how to avoid it. James, you’ve got the floor.”

James stood at once. He exchanged smiles with most everybody there; he was (and always had been) very well liked. Draco was certain that he was a shoo-in for Minister whenever Hermione retired.

“Good evening! I’ve actually made it to a meeting without a kid in tow, so I consider that a win no matter what. So, as most of you know, we’ve seen an _alarming_ increase in non-magical births…”

While James broke down the statistics and opened a dialogue about the abandoned Squib children, everybody listened uneasily. Evvie and Caldwell stood next; their explanations were so detailed and technical that Draco found himself drifting off a few times. The main points, he thought, were that they’d determined lime pox to be the cause and that they could set up a testing protocol for it at St. Mungo’s. Everybody automatically perked up as Lily stood; those who knew her knew this would certainly not be boring (you could call Lily Potter a lot of things, but _dull_ was not one of them), and those who didn’t were interested in what they did know about her (Harry Potter’s youngest child, the creator of the well-regarded eye-sight potion, record-breaking dragonologist, poacher-catcher…). Draco wasn’t even sure what he expected, but it was very off from what they got. The first thing Lily did was conjure a blackboard. She charmed it to hover steadily beside her. She peered at all of them.

“A dragon’s heart,” she began, “does more than just provide the strings for your wands.”

Draco watched on in fascination as Lily drew a dragon. She methodically—starting at the snout—went down the dragon, writing the effects of lime pox down on each specific part. After she’d explained the horrible nature of lime pox in the dragon world, she embarked on an impassioned rant against poaching, one that made the Lead Healer start to cry.

“Everybody’s got their solutions,” she finished with. “But until we stop this poaching entirely, we won’t be able to fix this problem. And short of rounding them all up and executing them—”

“ _Lily_ ,” Hermione scolded.

“I’m not saying we _should,_ Aunt Hermione,” Lily muttered back. “What I _am_ saying is that the only _legal_ way to get them to stop poaching is by making it unprofitable. I know two really brilliant businesspeople who are willing to take on and lead a campaign against this poaching.”

“Sounds expensive,” Daisy Parkinson piped up. She (like Draco) was there to observe, in her case on behalf of the financing department. “An effective campaign would cost hundreds of thousands of galleons. We haven’t got that to waste, and certainly not for _dragons._ ”

She said the word like it was something disgusting and unworthy. _Here we go,_ Draco thought. He braced himself. Lily’s cheeks turned ruddy. She ground her teeth.

“No,” she finally said. “No, it won't, but thanks for your input, Daisy.”

Daisy cackled. “It ‘won’t?’ Sorry, I’m not very reassured. How do you know that?”

“‘Cause my boyfriend did a course in marketing and I’ve had him look over it. He says our _cheap_ campaign _would_ be effective.”

Lily turned her eyes to Caden. He stood at once.

“The proposed campaign wouldn’t even total five thousand. Aster Boot, owner of Flowers and Vines in Diagon Alley, has created a line of synthetic dragon scale merchandise. We’re aiming for a promotional campaign, where we both advertise and push people to buy the synthetic products instead of the poached, _and_ raise awareness of what’s being done to the dragons. We’re talking organized events in Diagon Alley, ads in _The Prophet_ and other publications, promotional shows on the radio…if we can reduce demand for poached products, they’ll stop supplying.”

“It seems worth consideration,” Hermione said. “We’ll schedule a meeting with the necessary departments to work through the proposal. Greene, could you…?”

Greene rose and gave a much more droning breakdown of how lime pox was affecting the magical human body. It was the part everybody had really been waiting for, but somehow, Greene made it feel as if they were listening to the dictionary being read. Draco stifled a yawn as Greene embarked upon the dos and don’ts of staying lime pox free. By the time he finished, everybody was rather subdued. That quickly changed.

“While the vaccine is being made, we can send all these squib children to live with muggles and make a negative lime pox test mandatory for procreating,” Daisy suggested.

Rose, who had been taking notes diligently, looked up.

“Daisy, there is no legal standing for any of that. You can’t take people’s children and you certainly can’t restrict them from reproducing. Instead, I think we ought to get rid of the Magical Indication Screenings. If people don’t know from the baby’s first breath whether or not it’s magical, they’ll form a proper bond with it, and then they’ll be less likely to abandon it later on when they start getting suspicions about it being non-magical.”

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Pax Bulstrode snapped. He looked up from his notebook and scowled. “Parents have the right to full disclosure on their children’s health from medical professionals!”

“But it’s not pertaining to their health, is it, Pax?” Rose argued back. “Just their magical ability.”

“That _is_ part of being healthy,” he insisted. “Being non-magical is a gross deformity…it lowers the quality of life _significantly_! Instead of outlawing this test, we should update it so we can check during pregnancy! It isn’t fair to these horrible squibs that we're allowing them to be born. We should do away with any non-magical pregnancies and introduce government incentives for people to have babies with other non-infected members of our society.”

“Being non-magical is _not_ a deformity,” Evvie interrupted. “Rose is right; it has _nothing_ to do with the health of the child. We ought to implement testing within St. Mungo’s and make sure everybody is fully informed, but if they want to carry on having a baby—even when they know it will be non-magical—that is none of our business. A magical life is not worth more than a muggle or squib one. I thought we had moved past that idea as a society, but apparently not.”

“What do you propose we do about all these squibs, then?” Bulstrode challenged. “When they start outnumbering us?”

Evvie squared her shoulders. Draco wondered if what she was about to say was what she and Gemma had been arguing over before the meeting. “We need to create a distinct culture and place without our society for squibs.”

Bulstrode scoffed. Quite a few people exchanged uneasy looks.

“If we could integrate them into our society, they’d feel less pressured to ultimately merge with muggles. Some are happy doing that, but others aren’t. If we ship off every squib and only rely on those who aren’t infected to procreate, we’re going to have a dire population issue on our hands. There are plenty of areas in our society that squibs could fit into, if only we provided the slightest accommodations. They could work in shops, they could do certain clerical jobs, certain custodial jobs. And whether or not everybody wants to admit it—I’m sure you don’t—muggles have made some advancements in their society that far surpass ours in terms of convenience. We could introduce non-magical professions like psychiatry—”

“This is the stupidest, most naive shite I have _ever—”_

“You need to let her finish!” James snapped, stepping over Bulstrode’s objection. “She’s got a point, Pax! We got so many abandoned squib children that we’ve run out of foster families! We can’t realistically send all those kids off to muggle homes without wiping all their memories—”

“Do that, then! Perfect.”

“ _No_!” Evvie and James chorused.

“What sort of monster are you?” Lily spoke up, disgusted. “You’d wipe the memories of loads of kids against their will and send them, confused and lost, to live with complete strangers in a world they don’t even know?!”

Daisy stepped in to defend Pax. “Like you’re one to judge! It’s freaks like you who caused this issue! Dragons aren’t owls or dogs; they serve _no_ practical purpose and they should’ve been executed and done away with _ages_ ago! If they had been, we wouldn’t have this issue!”

“You serve no practical purpose either, Daisy, and yet we keep _you_ around,” Lily bit. 

Daisy narrowed her eyes. “ _Freak_ ,” she repeated coldly.

“Oh, brilliant contribution, Daisy,” Caden spoke up. Draco saw Rose and James stifling laughter as Caden gave a slow, sarcastic clap. “You've gotten us so much closer to solving this problem.”

“There wouldn’t _be_ a problem if nasty people didn’t insist on protecting _monsters_ —”

“In case you were daydreaming or otherwise intellectually absent when this was being discussed, I'll remind you: it’s the _poachers_ who caused this! They turned lime pox into a weapon; _they_ have spread it,” Caden shot back.

“Look,” James interrupted. Everybody automatically looked to him. “If we do Lily’s campaign, we can lower the demand for poaching. In the meantime, Vivienne, could your department double your efforts towards catching those still active?”

“We need further international cooperation,” Vivienne answered. “If we can get that—yes.”

Hermione leaned over the table and glanced down at her daughter. “Rose?”

Rose didn’t even look up; her quill was still scratching away. “Already making a list.”

“We’ll have to go public with this,” said the Editor of _the Prophet._ “It’s the only way to ensure everybody will throw their poached items out.”

“That’s not realistic,” Daisy argued. “They’re not going to throw something out that they paid thousands for. Especially if they’re done having kids. Lily, is there a way to properly disinfect the merchandise?”

For a moment, Draco feared Lily would snap back at Daisy over their past sparring, but she—like Daisy—decided it was more important to move forward.

“Yes. We have a sterilization technique, but it’s expensive and only our reservations have the technology.”

Hermione lifted a hand into the air, drawing everybody's attention to her. “We can advertise two options: burning your poached items or sending them off to be sterilized. The money that the sterilization collects can go to funding the search for our cure.”

“How will we enforce this?” James wondered. “We can’t exactly go through and search everybody's house.”

It was a fair point.

“It’s a public health issue. We’ll have to put forth a strong incentive. A few months of prison time for venturing into public wearing poached items without a certificate to say it’s been sterilized should do it,” Rose said.

“Azkaban for wearing clothes!” Pax scoffed, as if that was the most absurd encroachment of liberty he’d ever heard.

“Weren’t you _just_ suggesting tearing non-magical children from their parents’ arms?” Lily asked flatly.

“No! That was Daisy. I said they shouldn’t even be allowed to be born in the first place,” Pax corrected coolly.

“ _Oh_ , right, _sorry_. You’re clearly the highest moral authority in the room.”

James spoke up again. “So if we can curb the poaching—with the campaign, increased Auror focus on their groups, and the prohibition of the garments—we can stop the spread. Then, like Evvie said, we could set up a testing program in St. Mungo’s. All potential parents can go and have their blood test and be told—very clearly—whether or not they’ll have a magical or non-magical baby. My department is already working on support programs for families with non-magical children; we can make those classes mandatory, to make sure the families know what they’re getting themselves into.”

“What if we don’t have many people left who aren’t already infected?” Greene asked.

“In that case, we’ll need to create a way to encourage the few who aren’t infected to have a baby together—even if they aren’t romantically involved,” Caldwell answered.

This caused outraged at once. Hermione had to stand and give the table a stern look before they fell silent.

“It’s _spitting_ in the face of marriage!” Daisy cried.

“Daisy, you’re on your fourth husband!” Rose said, annoyed.

“Nobody’s saying we’re going to order non-infected members of our society to shag, calm down!” Evvie interrupted. “Scorpius Malfoy—” Draco looked up quickly— “is working on a way to modify muggle reproduction technologies for our world. Who here knows about muggle artificial insemination?”

Draco had already heard all about this (Scorpius had excitedly told him everything after he read his first book on the matter), but he, James, Evvie, Rose, and Hermione were the only ones who had. After Evvie finished, Pax crossed his arms.

“Nobody can make _me_ provide a ‘sample’!”

“Nobody’s asking,” Evvie said coolly. Lily sniggered. “This would be on a voluntary basis; the last thing we want to do is force people who don’t want kids to have them. That’s asking for neglect and abuse. If we can establish this as an alternative, people who want kids might be more willing to have them with non-infected donors.”

“This will completely destroy traditional family lines!” Pax argued. “If you have Mr. and Mrs. Smith having Mrs. Smith and Mr. Wright’s baby, but the baby is raised as a Smith…how will anybody really know anybody else’s blood status?!”

“Oh, because it’d be _such_ a tragedy if people couldn’t automatically know who to discriminate against,” Lily said. She rolled her eyes.

“Of course strict records will be kept,” Caldwell said. “For the medical history aspect.”

“Nobody would do that,” Daisy said. She laughed derisively. “Nobody would want to make a baby like that and _nobody_ would donate their eggs or sperm. It’s a waste of money and we should _not_ allow our healthcare funds to go towards it.”

“They would,” countered Evvie. “People have an interest in seeing our world survive, Daisy. And there are people out there who would absolutely do that for the people in their lives that they care about. If somebody you loved—a sibling or a dear friend—wanted a baby but was infected, it’s not insane to think you might offer to help, both for that person _and_ our world.”

Daisy laughed again. Rose snapped.

“Shut up, will you?! There are people in this room that _are_ planning on doing that for other people; you’ve no idea what you’re talking about and attitudes like yours are going to severely cripple our world’s recovery.”

Draco tried not to peer around the table curiously, but he couldn’t help it. He wondered who was already planning on doing this; it was brave, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be the first person to embark upon a brand-new procedure.

“Oh, so _you’re_ going to do that?!”

“No, _I’m_ not!”

“Who here is stupid enough to?!”

“Helping somebody else is _not_ stupid,” James said hotly.

“So you, James? _God_ , don’t you have enough kids already?” Daisy laughed coldly.

James chose to remain silent. He locked eyes with Draco for a brief moment; Draco wondered if he wanted him to interrupt the conversation.

“I think it’s disgusting,” Pax piped up. “Unnatural. Babies aren’t mean to be made like that.”

“I’m sure the way _you_ were made was disgusting and unnatural but here you are…” Lily murmured underneath her breath. Thankfully, only the people immediately around her (Draco, Caden, Rose) heard.

“Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter,” Hermione interrupted, “it’s our best bet towards increasing magical births. James, you and I will need to work on support programs and incentive packages. What are our propositions for the long-term when it comes to the non-magical babies already here?”

“Exile,” Daisy said.

“Integration,” Evvie corrected.

“What do _squibs_ have to do in the _magical world_?! That’d be like inviting muggles in to stay!”

“No, it wouldn’t. Because squibs are members of magical families.”

“Squibs are a stain on our society and they’ll have other squibs and soon we’ll be overrun by them!”

For the first time Draco had ever seen, Evvie looked close to losing her temper. Her cheeks were flushed.

“As somebody who specializes in genetics—”

“Evvie!” Hermione and Caldwell cried, horrified. People in the Department of Mysteries were _never_ supposed to admit their specializations.

“—and as somebody who _is_ the magical child of a squib, I find your ignorance and prejudice disturbing at best and disqualifying at worst. I’m not sure somebody with your views should be employed within our government.”

A hush fell over the table. Most people were clearly unaware that her mother was non-magical. She was able to escape from association with the Farley family simply because she had a different name and had grown up in the muggle world.

“Who’s your mother?” Pax demanded.

“Evelyn Farley. You wouldn’t know her because she was hidden away and homeschooled for eighteen years, and by the time she was old enough to leave home, she’d formed such an intense hatred of wizardkind and their world that she ran off to the muggle world and hasn’t been back since.”

“So you want us to completely rework our society so _your mummy_ can come back in for tea? I think that bias disqualifies _you_ from working on this problem,” Daisy said, an edge of smugness to her tone.

“That’s _not_ what she’s saying and you know it,” James interjected. “She’s pointing out that there _are_ places in our world for squibs to live and thrive; the only reason they haven’t thus far is because of the unfair prejudices people still hold. The best solution to this problem all around is to integrate them into our society. If we banish them all, not only will that absolutely destroy the children and their parents, but we’ll demolish entire family lines. In many families, their non-magical child is all they have. It’s time to get rid of the way we discriminate against squibs.”

“Draco,” Hermione called. Draco looked to her at once. “I want a special branch of your union dedicated to non-magical members of our world.”

“Right,” Draco agreed at once. “Of course. And, for the record, I agree with Evvie and James.”

“This isn’t right,” Pax said. He was red in the face with anger. “People have the right to get rid of their squibs! A squib isn’t what those people were promised! If my wife got pregnant and it was a squib, we should have the right to do away with it! When magical people have babies, they have a right to what they were _promised_ —a magical baby! Not a _squib_! Why are we pretending like squibs are normal when we all know they suffer a serious defect that will cause them lifelong misery?”

“We’re not pretending that, Pax. That’s just the truth. You’ve got no evidence to back up what you’re saying,” Rose said.

James seemed to have finally cracked. Draco was certain he was thinking about that little squib child, Aurora, who was abandoned by her mother like she was nothing.

“Nobody promises you a damn thing when you have kids,” James snapped. People had been snapping at each other for the majority of the meeting, but the second James’s voice took on that tone, everybody looked shocked. “You aren’t promised anything. Loads of women get pregnant and never even get to have their babies. These mums who've had non-magical babies are _lucky_. They were blessed with beautiful, healthy babies—there’s nothing wrong with them whatsoever despite a lack of magical power. Nothing at all. It _isn’t_ the kids’ faults that they were born that way, but they’re treated with so much malice and scorn from people like you despite. And I’ll tell you something else—if you feel that way, if you and your wife feel like that, you two have no business having a child. You have no business having a child if you aren’t prepared to love and care for it no matter how it’s born. It doesn’t matter. You have a duty to love and care for a child born with illnesses, different traits than you’d hoped, or disorders just the same as you’d love a ‘normal’ child. You don’t get to decide which children are worthy of love. This is _not_ a quality of life issue."

“And you don’t get to judge me and my wife!” cried Pax, outraged.

“I’m perfectly entitled to judge you two because from what you’ve said, your parenting would be absolute shit, and you should be ashamed.”

“Okay,” Draco interrupted quickly. For whatever reason, James losing his temper was much more alarming than anybody else doing it, and Draco feared things would get out of control quickly. “Hermione, have you heard enough to decide what you want to do?”

“I’ve heard more than enough,” Hermione said, her eyes on her notes. “Some things more alarming than others...things that are going to require _extensive_ follow-up. Right. Stay on top of your memos; I’ll be scheduling meetings throughout the week.”

Draco hung back until the Potters were safely from the room—to make sure Parkinson or Bulstrode didn’t decide to take out their frustration on them—and then he took the exit to the main street after saying quick goodbyes. He wanted to take a brisk walk to Scorpius and Albus’s flat; the cold air would do him some good. He had just stepped out of the telephone box when he spotted a shadowy figure to his right. He automatically stuck his hand into his cloak pocket and wrapped it around his wand. He kept the figure in his sights as he set off in the proper direction. He’d just realized the person was following him when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“What?” he demanded. He spun around to face them, but when he got a good look at who it was, his irritation melted immediately. He felt his cheeks warm. Gemma bounced on the balls of her feet and then gave him a smug, sunny smile.

“Surprise,” she said.

“Hi! Hello. Were you waiting out here the entire time?”

“No, I was getting drinks with my niece’s husband while he waited for her. How was it?”

Draco considered her question. “Enlightening.”

“In a bad way?”

“For the most part, yes.” They resumed walking. Draco could feel the minuscule distance between his hand and hers. He took a deep breath. When he reached over and hesitantly touched the back of her hand, she immediately turned it and wove their fingers together. Draco smiled down at the pavement. His heart was pounding out a childish beat. “Your niece had a good idea.”

“Hmm. Yes, well. I’m not so sure of that,” Gemma admitted. Draco could sense there was more; he gave her time to put her thoughts into words. “The wizarding world never made my sister happy. The first time I _ever_ saw her genuinely happy was on her wedding day. She ran off into the muggle world at age eighteen and never looked back. I can’t imagine how she or anybody like her could be happy here with the way they’re treated.”

“If things changed…”

“It’s a sweet idea,” Gemma said.

“But you don’t think it’s realistic?”

“Look how many years it took just to get people to stop trying to periodically murder muggle-borns. No, I’ve seen firsthand how squibs and their families are treated. I think it’s best to let them out.”

There was a time Draco had felt it was unrealistic to _ever_ imagine purebloods and muggle-borns getting along (and had thought even the idea was inappropriate), and yet…

“Maybe the world will surprise you yet. It did me,” he admitted.

She pulled on his hand and leaned against his side. Draco found himself automatically dropping her hand so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders instead. It was automatic, a muscle memory; he held her to his side like he’d been doing it for ages.

“Where are you headed? Home?”

“My son’s,” Draco corrected.

“Brilliant. I’ll walk you.”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“I want to.”

It was unbelievably nice to walk with somebody he fancied again. It was indescribably lovely to feel, even for a moment, that he was part of a _unit_ , instead of being _just Draco_. He felt proud to have his arm around her. He felt comforted by her presence. He hadn’t realized how lonely he’d been until that moment.

“This is me,” Draco said, slowing to a stop in front of Scorpius and Albus’s flat building. “Er…I’d invite you up, but my son is weird about the house being tidy for guests.”

She smiled. “It’s no problem. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll be by to fix the cauldron.”

“You’re a life-saver, you are.”

“A cauldron-saver, at any rate.”

They smiled at each other. She seemed to be waiting for something, and no matter how many times Draco told himself to wave and walk away, he seemed to be waiting, too. He knew what they were both waiting for, but he didn’t think he had the courage.

“Are you going to kiss me or shall I spend another night imagining what it’d be like?”

Draco’s heart jumped up into his throat. He swallowed nervously and forced it back down.

“I suppose I could,” he allowed. “So you can get some sleep.”

“How chivalrous.”

Draco’s hands were trembling slightly as he set them on her hips. She looped her arms around his neck. Draco leaned in slowly, bit-by-bit, until he could feel her breath against his lips. He felt the sudden urge to defend himself preemptively; it had, after all, been nearly nine years since he’d last kissed someone. He didn’t want to be rubbish at it. But as he leaned in and pressed his lips softly to hers, he felt her melt into his embrace. He didn’t think it was rubbish. He felt a stirring in his heart. Part of him wanted to pull away and run in the opposite direction; another part of him wanted to invite her home with him.

It was Gemma who pulled back. Draco stared at her moonlit expression. Her light eyes seemed softer than they ever had before.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

He nodded. He felt a bit dazed. “Tomorrow.”

* * *

 

He was still grinning when he stepped into his son’s flat. He’d expected to find his son and his husband lounging on the sofa, as that’s normally what they were doing at this time of night, but that wasn’t what he found. He stepped into the living room and blinked, surprised.

“Oh. Hello again,” he greeted.

Lily waved lazily. Nora waved Delilah’s hand in hers. James smiled.

“Hey, Draco,” Albus greeted, his head still bowed over the papers littering the surface of the coffee table. Scorpius jumped up—but it was a guilty jump.

“DAD!” he cried, alarmed. He locked eyes with Albus and jerked his head to the left; Albus quickly shoved all the papers onto the carpet. Those two weren’t exactly subtle.

“What’s going on?” Draco asked.

His son bounced over to him. Draco’s concern melted as Scorpius stopped in front of him because Scorpius looked _beyond_ happy. He was glowing with joy; his smile was so huge it made his eyes crinkle at the corners. Draco was accosted with affection. He reached out and pulled his son into a firm hug. Scorpius was _still_ beaming when he leaned back. Draco shot a look back at the group of Potters.

“What are you up to? It’s never good when I see that many Potters grouped around with silly grins…”

“Nothing! Nothing. Just…chatting. Talking. Planning. About the future and such. How was the meeting? How was your day? How was lunch? Why did you get lunch with Albus but not me?”

Draco reached up and patted Scorpius’s cheek fondly. “You were working, Scorpius.”

“Right. Well? The meeting?!” Scorpius’s light eyes studied Draco’s face. His smile grew. “You look really happy, Dad. James and Lily didn’t say the meeting went that well!”

“Oh, it didn’t. I…well…” Draco trailed off. He wanted to share his news with his son, but he backed out at the last second. Scorpius looked so happy. What if the news upset him—what if he didn’t think it was long enough after Astoria for his dad to be dating again? What if he had a secret dislike of Gemma? No, Draco couldn’t risk upsetting him when he was so happy. “I had a great latte.”

“Oh, yeah? You’re always saying nobody gets them right except Minky!”

“Well, I found a little muggle shop, and it was perfect,” he lied. “What’s got _you_ so overjoyed?”

“Me? Overjoyed? No, I’m just Scorpius, just normal, calm, even-tempered Scorpius, nothing remarkable about my current mood, just living my life, you know, going to work and kissing Albus and washing the dishes and cleaning my teeth—”

“Okay,” Draco laughed. He set his hands on Scorpius’s shoulders. “I get it.”

They held their gaze, their eyes twinkling, smiles on both their faces. Draco didn’t know if he was projecting onto his son, but for a moment, he thought he sensed that Scorpius was hiding something from him as well. Their heavy silence might’ve stretched on longer, but thankfully, Lily interrupted.

“So that’s still a no on sharing the news?” she hissed to Scorpius.

“Yes! NO! I mean—yes, it’s a no!” Scorpius hissed back. Draco furrowed his brow. Scorpius looked back at him and laughed nervously. “Er—Lily has to go back sooner than she thought. There is a dragon emergency. She found out a few minutes ago. Came by to tell us and…sort everything out.”

Draco blinked. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”

“Er…”

“Well, he doesn’t want you to miss me, obviously,” Lily said. She came to stand beside Draco and looped her arm through his. “He knows how terribly boring the WWEU will be without me.”

Draco rolled his eyes, but he smiled. “I’ll admit Caden’s office will seem a lot quieter and duller without you.”

Pain passed over her expression, but it was gone as soon as he’d noticed it. She smiled weakly. “I’ll try to send Howlers every now and then.”

“Ha, ha,” Draco said. She gave his arm a brief squeeze before stepping away. Draco caught himself smiling. It wasn’t so much to do with her, really; he was just remembering how much he’d wanted a daughter, once upon a time. He and Astoria, at the start of their marriage…they’d always dreamed about having a little boy and a little girl. That was before her health had begun failing, of course. There were very few dreams they still had after that. Scorpius was the only one that’d come true.

“Draco!” Albus called, an edge of impatience in his voice. “C’mon, I want to hear a _level-headed_ recount of the meeting! I can’t trust my siblings!”

“Yes, come sit!” Scorpius urged eagerly. “Lily, where are you going?”

“No, I’m off,” she told them. She was already walking towards the fireplace. “I’ve got two of my greatest lifelong loves waiting at home: Evangeline and chocolate-flavored firewhisky. I’m going to drink until I’m no longer depressed about leaving. Should be fun.” She gave them a thumbs-up, but she looked thoroughly depressed.

“Where’s your other love?” Albus taunted.

“Hopefully on the kitchen table, naked, awaiting my arrival. _With_ the firewhisky.”

“ _Lily_!” James, Albus, and Scorpius cried.

“If we haven’t got honesty, brothers, what _do_ we have? ‘Night.”

“Goodnight, Lily,” Nora said cheerfully. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning for your send off. Eight thirty!”

“Oh, Merlin, don’t remind me…” Lily frowned. She still looked depressed as she threw Floo powder down and disappeared.

“Why doesn’t she just stay?” Draco wondered aloud.

“It’s not that she doesn’t want to go back, she loves her job,” Nora said. “I just think it’s very difficult for her to leave everybody behind.”

Draco couldn’t fault her on that.

* * *

 

To make up for the lunch Scorpius missed out on, Draco got up early that next morning and joined Scorpius and Albus for breakfast at a café nearby the hospital. Ginny had arrived at the Manor ten minutes before Draco was set to leave, grumbling on about Harry being in a strop over Lily’s departure, so he invited her along with them. Gradually, it turned into a family affair, with various Potters and Weasleys wandering in from seemingly thin air. By the time they all finished breakfast and headed together to the Ministry to see Lily off, their party of three had turned into a group of fourteen (including sulking Harry). Draco realized, as he walked with the massive group, that he didn’t feel like an outsider; he felt like a member of the family. He felt like he had a right to be there, a _place_ there. And when Lily started saying her goodbyes, he realized he actually was going to miss her a bit. She was right to say that the WWEU would be much less interesting with her gone.

“Be safe,” Hermione ordered. She took Lily’s face in her hands. “It’s not all on you. Give somebody else a chance to react sometimes, yeah?”

“All right…” Lily humored her. “Love you, Minister.”

“I love you, too,” Hermione smiled.

Ron hoisted Lily up into the air as he hugged her. She was giggling as he set her back on the ground. “Name a dragon after me,” he requested.

“Just one?” Lily teased.

“Go on, then. Two! Ron and Ronald.”

“I’ll send Hugo videos on his pocket phone. Have him show you.”

“Will do,” Ron saluted.

Hugo and Aster shared a sad, quiet group hug with Lily, Rose gave her a quick hug, and then Harry pulled his daughter into his arms.

“Ring us on that mobile tonight,” Harry told Lily. She didn’t reply. For at least a minute, they stood there hugging; Lily didn’t seem to be showing any signs of letting go, and neither did Harry. If anything, time made his embrace grow more and more protective. He pressed his face into her hair. “If you get upset, come home. If you need me, I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t fight the poachers on your first day back.”

“What about my second?” Lily mumbled.

Harry set his hands on her shoulders and gently moved her back. He kissed her forehead. “Wouldn’t be my Lulu if you didn’t.”

Ginny was sniffling after her long hug with her daughter. Draco patted Lily’s shoulder and gave her a smile. Finnigan burst into hysterical sobs after kissing his auntie’s face nearly a dozen times; Nora had to physically pull him from Lily’s leg. He sobbed into his mum’s neck with such dramatics that an onlooker would’ve thought somebody had died. His tears set off his siblings; soon every Potter child was crying, even Delilah. Lily looked horrified.

“Oh, no, please, make them stop,” she pleaded with James, her eyes filling rapidly with tears. James seized her in a back-breaking hug. “I’m going to cry, please make them stop, I mean it!”

Nora kissed Lily’s cheek quickly and then left the Portkey Office with her distraught children. Albus and Scorpius hugged Lily at once, sandwiching her between them in a surprisingly warm hug. She was sniffling when they pulled back. She’d never resembled Ginny more.

“Five minutes,” the Portkey Office employee warned.

There was only one more goodbye left. Lily stared at Caden, her eyes swelling with tears. He stared back, his arms crossed tightly, his mouth set into a line. Everybody took a sudden interest in their shoes as the two leaned in to share a kiss. Lily turned her back on him right afterwards; the way she paused made Draco think she was struggling to withhold her tears.

“‘Kay,” she finally said thickly, her back still to them. “Bye, then.”

Without another word, she took off towards the far door at a brisk pace, headed towards the portkey set up for her. The door swung shut after her. They listened as the sound of her suitcase wheels rolling unevenly over the stone floor gradually faded. James wrapped an arm around Caden’s shoulders. Harry pulled Ginny into his arms and kissed the top of her head. Albus kissed Scorpius. Draco was considering going out into the hall to help Nora with her kids when the sound of wheels against stone started again. He was the first to look up at the door (probably because he was the only one not comforting somebody). The sound grew louder and faster. Draco furrowed his brow in confusion as Lily burst back into the room, her damp cheeks shining beneath the light. She dropped her suitcase handle and crossed the room in long, quick strides; Caden’s question fell into Lily’s mouth as she grasped his face and thoroughly snogged him.

“Ew,” Albus complained beneath his breath.

Lily pulled back, but she didn’t drop her hands from his face. She seemed to be brimming with something that Draco couldn’t name. He realized it was love quickly enough.

“Come with me,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “Caden, come with me.”

It was odd, seeing Lily like that: vulnerable, exposed, actually trembling with emotion. Somehow, she looked even stronger for it. She looked braver to Draco than she ever had before, and nobody could deny that Lily Potter had always had moments of insane bravery.

Caden parted his lips in surprise. “What? Come to New Zealand? Now?”

“Now. God, fucking come with me. Live with me. I can’t bear it—I don’t want to leave you. Don’t make me leave you again. Please. I love you, I fucking love you.”

Draco glanced sideways towards the rest of the group. Rose’s jaw had literally dropped. James was tearing up, one hand pressed over his heart. Albus was only barely managing to muffle his snickers, and that was probably only because both Ginny and Hermione had him pinned with deadly glares, as if _daring_ him to ruin Lily’s progress. Scorpius’s eyes had welled with proud tears.

“Well?” Ron hissed loudly. "Are you going to say yes?!" 

Ginny and Hermione backhanded his shoulders.

Caden's response was nonverbal, but it was certainly an answer. Draco arched an eyebrow as Caden backed Lily up against the nearby wall; he was shameless as he captured her lips with his and grasped her waist, pulling her snugly against him.  

Draco heard Harry whisper: “Oh, I don't want to watch this...can we go?”

“No way,” Ginny hissed back. “I’ve got to see how this plays out.”

They couldn’t make out whatever Caden whispered to her, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him in an excited, relieved hug, so Draco guessed it was a yes.

“One minute—sixty seconds…five-nine…”

The couple jumped like they’d just had ice water dumped over them. Lily hurried over and grasped her suitcase. Caden made a beeline for Draco.

Beaming, he said: “I quit.”

Draco blinked. “Oh. Well…that’s…disappointing,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry. We’ll talk.” He turned to the first Potter he saw. “Ginny, could you send my things?”

“Forty-nine…forty-eight…”

“Yes! Yes, go! I’ll talk to you on the—the pocket phone!” Ginny said. She shoved Caden forward. Caden hurried over to Aster and Hugo. He grasped Aster’s hands and kissed them. He hugged Hugo.

“Go, go!” Rose said, agonized on Caden and Lily’s behalf as the worker’s countdown reached thirty-five. “Go before you miss it and make this entire dramatic event really awkward and anti-climactic for all of us!”

“I wanted to say goodbye to Delilah—”

“Twenty-nine, twenty-eight—”

Lily grasped Caden’s hand. “You can send her a toy.”

Caden smiled down at her. “Right. Run?”

“Run,” Lily agreed.

Everybody watched on fondly as the couple booked it towards the portkey. They waited with bated breath as the portkey official checked their enchanted parchment. He looked up.

“They made it.”

The mood gradually went from joyous to somber. Draco patted Ginny’s arm as their group slowly walked from the department.

“She’ll be back,” James reminded Harry. He threw an arm around his dad’s shoulders. “In around seven months. It’ll fly by.”

“Easy for you to say,” Harry muttered. “ _Your_ daughter’s not leaving _you_.”

Draco was suddenly extremely relieved that Scorpius had never shown an interest in going anywhere. He was certain that he wouldn’t have taken it even half as well as the Potters were taking their daughter’s departure.

“Hey,” Draco said, walking up to step between his son and his son-in-law. “What if we did take a holiday this weekend?”

“I’ve got work,” Albus moaned. “Don’t remind me!”

“We could get it rescheduled. Hermione owes me a favor. Let’s do it,” Draco urged.

Scorpius and Albus exchanged a look. After a moment, they beamed.

“All right, yeah, if you can really get me off the weekend shift,” Albus said excitedly.

“Maybe I can get another pair of trousers to replace the ones that got covered in sick!” Scorpius added.

Albus actually hopped in place; the last time Draco had seen him _that_ excited was when he and Scorpius shared the news of their engagement. It brought a smile to his face.

“Scorpius, there are _loads_ of baby shops in Paris!!” Albus exclaimed.

Scorpius was so equally overwhelmed with excitement that he missed Draco’s confused look. After watching them laugh together, Draco decided to let it go; they were an odd match, his son and Albus. An odd—but wonderful—match. 


	10. II. Nine to Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Change is in the air, but for the first time, Lily isn't sure she necessarily wants it. Despite an unrelenting work schedule, a labor shortage, and the maddening havoc the poachers have wreaked, she's surprisingly content in her new life. Back in England, Delilah's a year old, the Potter family has grown by one, and the Potter-Malfoys have their sights set on fatherhood.

**SEVEN MONTHS LATER**

Like every other morning, Lily woke to the wall-shaking roar of the passing five AM train. Unlike every other morning, she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it.

“Ugh,” she moaned pitifully. She turned over onto her stomach and pressed her face into her pillow. She drifted in and out of sleep for another five minutes, overcome with self-pity, but she knew she didn’t have the time for a lie in. She’d finished up a twenty-three-hour shift around six the night prior, and she was already due back to the sanctuary at eight that morning. They were short two dragon keepers and one dragonologist, making Lily the only dragonologist at her sanctuary and one of only three people there actually trained to handle dragons one-on-one. It wouldn’t have been a problem six months ago when the sanctuary dragon population was kept at its cap of fifteen. But they were up to _thirty-six_ dragons now—fourteen with special needs, three sent away by other reservations for ‘undue violence against humans’, five rowdy adolescents, three pregnant mothers, and eleven who were suffering from a dragon form of PTSD after surviving a violent poaching attack on a nearby reservation. And Opal, lovely Opal, but Lily didn’t consider him a member of the general dragon population; to her, he was a companion. And lying there that morning, her entire body wracked with muscular pain, her raw burns still stinging as her bare skin brushed the sheets, her heart heavy with loneliness after yet another night alone…it was only her love for Opal and her other dragons that could’ve convinced her to sit up and part ways with her pillow.

She couldn’t even allow herself to really look at her boyfriend, lying fast asleep on his side of the bed, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to walk away from him if she did. She’d only seen him once during her twenty-three-hour shift (he’d brought her lunch and burn cream for her new burns), and then he’d had to go straight to the evening shift. She didn’t know when he got home last night (she’d passed out around seven PM, after eating an entire pizza and drinking two pints in the bathtub), but going by the fact that the customary morning train hadn’t woken him as it usually did, it had been an incredibly late night for him. And she wasn’t usually one to care much about routines, but she had to admit she missed their past ones; the wake-up call from the five AM train used to mean sleepy morning sex. Now it meant waking up for work, work, and more work…and more missing him. Not a fair trade-off at all, in Lily’s opinion.

She had quite literally fallen asleep atop the duvet in her bath towel, so when she glanced in the bathroom mirror, she wasn’t too surprised to see her hair sticking up in every direction. She set her hands on the cold granite of the sink and leaned forward. Her sigh drew on and on; it felt like somebody had punctured something within her like you puncture a balloon. And yet she still felt that heavy feeling of discontent weighing on her heart once it pandered off. Nothing had really been released.

“It’s fucking rubbish,” she muttered underneath her breath. She shoved the tap handle back and pushed her toothbrush underneath the water. The mirror tsked.

“Don’t take it out on the sink, Lily,” she chided.

“Oh, shut up,” Lily snapped, her words muffled around her toothbrush. “I’m not in the mood, Beatrice.”

The mirror tsked again. “You’re pushing yourself too hard, love. Your dad told you to slow down. I heard him on your muggle telephone.”

Lily brushed her teeth harder, annoyed. She was rewarded with the metallic taste of blood. She grimaced. When she leaned over and spat into the sink, her toothpaste was a bright pink.

“That’s what I’m talking about…” Beatrice sang, reminding Lily uncannily of her gran for a moment.

“Well, I haven’t exactly got a choice, have I?!” Lily exploded. Her temper—already short to begin with—was even more volatile than usual. She rinsed her toothbrush and sagged against the sink again, the taste of blood still turning her stomach. “Ivan and Whittle are the only dragon keepers left. Heyland’s bunked off. Winnie was a selfish bitch and abandoned us, knowing good and well that I’d have to pick up her slack, knowing that we were already overwhelmed when it was the two of us…! To top it all off, I’ve got another fifteen hours to work today, I don’t think I’ve had a real meal in at least a week, I haven’t had sex in five days, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on at Caden’s work because we haven’t had a proper conversation in nearly three days, and look at this,” Lily hopped up and sat her bare arse on the sink, shifting her body so her new burns– running vertically over her hip and over the outside of her thigh, blistery and an angry red— were visible. She lightly poked over the worst part; the skin over her right hip bone was a bit charred. “Not that it matters, but I should’ve gone to hospital for these. I had no time to and they really fucking hurt and the worst part is you’re the first thing I’ve talked to about this and you’re a sodding enchanted mirror in a warehouse toilet.”

Beatrice gasped, insulted. “This is _not_ a warehouse toilet anymore! I was _promoted_ when you two turned this into a house! Promoted to _bathroom mirror_! Honestly, Lily, don’t take your frustration out on others, it’s _completely_ unbecoming!”

Lily didn’t even have the energy to snap back. She just wanted to curl up on the bathroom tile and go back to sleep. Beatrice sighed.

“Why don’t you go and wake my son—”

“He. Is not. Your son. You. Are. A mirror,” Lily bit through gritted teeth. She felt her heart sink, though, because she truly wanted nothing more than to do just that. She wanted to wake him up so badly, wanted to touch his skin and talk to him more than she could express, so much that the sheer desperation of it brought tears to her eyes. So much that, for a moment, as she imagined how healing it’d feel even just to hug him, she could hardly breathe around her heavy heart. But she couldn’t do that. Her pain wasn’t the most important thing anymore. He’d probably only gotten home a couple of hours earlier, and he would surely have to work today as well. She couldn’t wake him up just because she was upset. “I can’t do that. He’s overworked, too. At least one of us should get some fucking sleep.”

“He was cut up about your burns last night,” Beatrice told her. She was an insufferable gossiper, so Lily tried to ignore her—so as not to encourage it—but it was impossible not to hear as she washed her face. “Rang charming Charlie, he did, all worried about whether or not to wake you and bring you to hospital.”

Lily grimaced into her palms. She finished rinsing the soap from her face and looked up at Beatrice, water dripping steadily into her eyes. “I meant to have them covered.”

“I told you a hot bath when you’re that tired was a bad idea, but did you listen? No. You ate disgusting, greasy food and—”

Lily lifted up Caden’s razor.

“If it’s all the same to you, Beatrice, I’d rather peel the skin from my face layer by layer with this than listen to you nag me. I haven’t got the energy for it. I’ve still got to wash and dry my clothes for today, catch up on the thirteen unread letters from other dragonologists that’ve amassed since yesterday, open all the unread letters on my pocket phone, commute to – blimey, no, I’m too tired to even continue talking about it. Bye.”

Lily pulled the curtain shut around the toilet, had her wee, shot one last glower into the mirror, and then stamped her way down the vibrating hall towards the kitchen. Their ‘house’ used to be a warehouse connected to a train station. When the train station had eventually stopped running (in favor of a new and more populated stop), the warehouse had gone on the market, and Lily had fallen in love at once by its rough character and great potential. Lily was very happy with how they’d renovated and fixed it up; the way the walls groaned and shook as the trains sped by was oddly comforting by now. It felt like home. And that morning, she dramatically felt like leaving her home might do her in. Dead at twenty. Cause of death: overexertion, loneliness, sexual frustration. Burns. Bad hair! Lily stopped dead by the small, decorative mirror hanging by the light switch. It was trembling from the force of the nearby train, but Lily saw enough to remind her of how awful her hair was. It wouldn’t do. She might pass out from exhaustion, but she would _not_ die with bad hair. She walked over, grabbed her wand from the kitchen table, and directed a steady stream of warm water at her hair. She stood shivering for a moment, naked in a puddle of water on her kitchen floor, and thought: _what if I didn’t go to work_? But she thought of Opal again. Topaz. Emerald. All of them. No—she’d have to rise to the challenge. What was it that Delphi had said about her so long ago? _You strengthen under pressure where others bend and crack_. She never thought she’d see the day when she was using Delphi’s words as last-ditch motivation.

She dried herself and the floor off, put the kettle on, and walked over to the washer. The clothes horse was creaking under the weight of two loads of laundry – neither she nor Caden had found the time to put any of them away yet. The clothes basket was overflowing with dirty laundry. Lily pulled one of Caden’s clean jumpers from the clothes horse, tugged it over her head, and then bent over to rummage through the dirty laundry for her work clothes. She had thrown them in this general direction last night, knowing that she’d have to wake up early to clean them, but too exhausted to care that she was fucking over her future self. Where were they? She pulled item after item out, got annoyed, and dumped the entire thing out on the floor. She was kneeling in the massive pile of laundry, growing frustrated to the point of tears, when she spotted her jeans from the corner of her eye. She paused. She stared at the last rung on the clothes horse. The jeans she always wore to work—comfortable and worn but tight-fitting enough that they didn’t get in her way—were hanging there, perfectly cleaned, the hole from the fire that’d caused her burns mended. Her cotton vest was right beside it. Even her faux leather jacket was hanging from a hanger on the edge of the frame, the previously smoke-scented material odor-free, the wrinkles and stains removed. Lily fell back on her bottom weakly. And she knew it was almost certainly because she was so incredibly tired, but right then, she was certain she had never seen anything more romantic in her entire fucking life. When had Caden done this? It would’ve had to have been when he got home. Lily’s heart expanded to a point that was almost painful as she thought about him stumbling home, exhausted and worn out, only to think about _her_. Her morning, her insanely long to-do list. The thought of him standing there at two or three in the morning, doing her laundry so she wouldn’t have to in the morning, made her love him even more (and _massively_ turned her on.) That was it. No more self-pity. No more crying to Beatrice. Caden clearly still saw something to love in her, despite how haggard she felt, so she would find that something within herself and she would take care of the both of them like he was trying to do.

With a steady resolve, Lily stood and walked back over to the kettle. She grabbed her phone from the charging stand and scrolled slowly through her contacts. As soon as she located the number of her muggle tattoo artist, she hit send.

“Lily Potter, we don’t open until _seven_ ,” Lon greeted.

“Oh, you’re always up at this hour, you told me yourself,” Lily reminded him. She pulled the kettle off the rings as soon as it started hissing. “I need an appointment.”

“More burns? They don’t pay you firefighters enough.”

“No,” Lily said sourly. She waved her wand; the teapot lifted from the drying rack and landed neatly beside her. She dumped the tea leaves Aster had sent her into the strainer, poured boiling water into the pot, and then replaced the lid. “They certainly don’t.”

“More of the same?”

“Yes,” Lily affirmed.

“Where?”

“Er…”

“Lily. I hope you’re not going to ask me to tattoo over unhealed burns that cover a good percentage of your body again, because as I told you the first time, you could get a deadly infection and I could get shut down and—”

“But I didn’t, did I? I didn’t get an infection. I told you; I’ve got an _insanely magical_ immune system.” She looked down at her new burns. “They’re not as bad as the time you’re thinking of. Please, Lon? I hate it like this.”

“I don’t know how you can bear the pain,” he admitted.

“Beauty _is_ pain,” Lily shot back easily.

“Where exactly are the burns and are there any changes you’d want to make to the tattoo template?”

Lily explained her mental image to Lon while the tea steeped. She poured an even amount into her and Caden’s mugs, peeked into the teapot, saw there was a bit left, and then topped Caden’s off. She fixed up their tea the way they both liked it and levitated the mugs out in front of her as she headed back towards the bedroom.

“Over your actual hip bone is the worst part of the burn?” Lon asked.

“Yeah, it’s a bit nasty, to be honest.”

“I’m not tattooing over that. Over the hip hurts badly enough as it is.”

“Yes you are!” Lily argued, affronted. She padded into the bedroom and slowly pulled her wand downwards, so the mugs settled gracefully on Caden’s bedside table. She pulled her mobile down from her ear and checked the time. She was beyond overjoyed that she’d have a few spare moments this morning, all thanks to him. She intended to repay him properly. “I want an entire sodding tiger lily over that burn! The pain can kiss my arse; I’m not having a burnt hip, Lon, I pride myself on my hips, I think they’re sexy, and I won’t accept your coddling.”

“You will probably actually pass out from the pain, Lily.”

“Then make sure I land on something soft, yeah?”

She climbed back up onto the bed. She was already pink-cheeked with arousal as she moved over to straddle Caden’s waist. He stirred slightly beneath her; she felt a shock course through her as their eyes met. Her heart began pounding.

“Hang on a moment,” she said into the phone. She lowered it so it was muffled into her chest, leaned over, and captured her boyfriend’s lips. Morning breath be damned; she felt a sea of longing open up within her from the moment their lips touched.

“Morning,” he whispered sleepily, his lips brushing hers as he did. Lily had intended on kissing him quickly, sitting with him while they had tea and she finished her conversation, and _then_ repaying him, but her arousal short-circuited that plan. She kissed from his lips to his cheek to his jaw, her heart hammering away in her chest.

“I fucking love you,” she whispered, mindful of the phone still pressed to the jumper she’d borrowed.

“Mmm,” he hummed happily, as her lips moved back to his. She delighted in the sensation of his tongue against hers as his hand pushed up the jumper she was wearing. She was abruptly one-track-minded. She sat back up and moved the phone back to her ear. “So when’s the soonest you can get in—I mean, get me in. Like my appointment, when can I…yeah.”

It was difficult to keep track of her thoughts, with Caden’s eyes boring into hers and his fingers caressing the unburned skin of her thighs.

“Because it’s you, I can work you in today. How’s lunchtime? Does that work for you?”

“Mmm, yeah,” Lily agreed. She realized it was a bit more breathless than she’d intended. “I mean—yes. Thank you.”

She ended the call and carelessly flung the phone to the other end of the bed. Caden’s hands pressed to her back and pulled her flush against his chest a moment later. She grinned into their kiss. She loved the sensation of his heart thumping away against hers.

“I made you tea,” she told him.

“I’d rather taste you.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to settle for the tea,” she said. “You’re the one who needs a proper reward.”

She sat back up, retrieved his tea, pressed it into his hands, and waited until he’d propped himself up against the headboard enough to actually take a sip without choking. She kneeled over him and moved her lips to his neck; he shivered at once. She heard him swallow his first sip of tea as she moved her lips down to his shoulder.

“You didn’t tell me you were _this_ burned,” he said. She could hear his frown. “I don’t even know where to put my hands.”

“Put them wherever you like. I’m not made of glass, you know.”

“No, I know…glass doesn’t burn.”

“Ha, ha,” she mumbled. She nipped lightly at his collarbone and then resumed her downward path. She took a moment to press her cheek over his heart; she smiled as she felt his thundering pulse against her face. His hands hesitantly settled on her hips. His touch against her burnt hip _did_ hurt, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You frightened me last night. Passed out like that, your skin all burnt— oh, Merlin.”

Lily smiled smugly into his stomach. He was so predictable. She only had to blow gently over his stomach once to get him going.

“I’m fine. Well, no—I wasn’t fine, but I’m fine right now in this moment, and I’ll be fine again once I find another sodding dragonologist.”

She kissed over his bellybutton; he flinched and reached down, grasping tightly at her shoulders. Lily looked up.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“Don’t ‘what’ me, you know that tickles!” he said. It was meant to be stern, but he was smiling throughout it. Lily knew he was also too overjoyed at finding a moment together to keep up the usual quality of their banter.

“Sorry…forgot,” she lied. She gave an angelic smile. He tugged at her hair as she leaned back down and purposefully trailed her nose over that same ticklish spot; their laughter mingled in together. Lily felt her affection and love drown her as she gave up on her teasing and continued kissing a path downwards.

“They can’t—seriously—expect you to work again to—” his words dissolved into a moan. He moved his hands up to her hair; Lily shivered as his nails dug gently into her scalp. “Today.”

“They can and they do. Okay. Can’t talk anymore. Drink your tea.”

He choked on his next sip as she made good on her promise to repay him for his generosity last night. It all fit well with the lesson she’d been slowly learning over the past few months: altruism could create more joy than egoism. And, contrary to what she’d always thought, it could be more enjoyable, too.   

* * *

 

She was in a remarkably good mood as she entered the sanctuary property. She was feeling a bit less pessimistic about her current situation. Sure – things were bad now. She was overwhelmed now. She and Caden were feeling the strain of joining the front lines of the war against the poachers. But things wouldn’t always be like this; soon, she’d find another dragonologist to take on, the poaching would die out, her load would lessen, and things would be wonderful again. She’d just have to grit her teeth and bear it until then.

“Morning,” she greeted the gateway guard. He smiled.

“Looks like Ivan’s prayers were answered.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “Please tell me these prayers were just to see my beautiful face and not because there was a crisis last night.”

“Keepers from the Sydney reservation arrived around two AM with another Opaleye who’d wandered their way.”

Lily looked up at the blue sky and sighed. “Great. Why here? The east reservation has loads more room and hands than we do!”

“From what I’ve heard, the dragon’s disabled; the eastern reservations won’t take him, said here was the only option.”

“Oh,” Lily said. She nodded. “Thanks for the update. Time to walk into the fires of hell—probably literally if this one is as violent as the last few we got.”

“You know, there are plenty of standard dragon keeper robes in the back room that block out most flames—”

“Antonio, we’ve talked about this. I can’t work in those conditions. All that fabric makes me feel like I’m suffocating, and then I get sloppy, and the dragons take advantage of that sloppiness, and – no, I work best like this. Those robes are for the others. Thanks for your concern.”

The elderly guard made a face at her attire but chose to keep his opinions to himself. It was a small miracle.

Lily took her broom from the supply shed once she’d been let past the main gate. She kicked off and flew up enough to survey the vast expanse of rolling hills and mountains, deep valley crevices, and sparkling rivers. From this high, her dragons looked like massive, shimmering opals resting upon the earth. There were the adolescents—behaving as rowdy as usual—to her left, the specially protected enclosure for the dragons with special handling needs to her right, the massive dome where they reared the babies directly in front of her, the metal roof reflecting the sun like a mirror. Just past the dome, she spotted the magically reinforced roof of her work hut. She smiled against the hard-beating wind; there was Opal, curled up on the roof as he usually was when she was gone. Emerald was hovering in the air around him; Lily made a mental note to do a pregnancy scan on her. The only time she ever actively sought out Opal’s affection outside of mating season was when she was pregnant (and after the deaths of their last babies, or so Ivan had told her).

Lily swooped down towards the roof, mindful to stay in Emerald’s sights so as not to startle her, and touched down right beside Opal. He pushed his snout up into the air as he felt the vibrations of her landing. Somebody had clearly forgotten to give him his eyesight potion. Lily felt irritation erupt inside of her. Now she’d have to lock him in a dark room after giving it to him, so the sunlight wouldn’t hurt him. Lily walked up to him and rested her palm against his snout. She stroked his scales gently, giving him time to breathe in her scent. Once he leaned his snout into her hand, she moved closer. She climbed up on his folded front legs and stroked the sides of his long face. She shot a look around herself, to make sure nobody was close enough to hear, and then she allowed herself to baby him.

“Those naughty dragon keepers,” she said softly. She moved her right hand beneath his chin and scratched at the course scales; he rumbled in approval and leaned closer towards her. In his enthusiasm, he nearly sent her falling off the roof, but she tightened her muscles and steadied herself. “They’re not taking care of you right, are they? Poor Opal…don’t worry, I’ll get you sorted. Do you want to nap outside of my window today? I don’t think there are any visitors scheduled.”

Opal’s favorite thing was curling up on the flowerbed outside of Lily’s opened office window and napping with his chin resting on the window ledge. She couldn’t let him when she had any outside visitors (for some reason, the sight of an Antipodean Opaleye’s entire head protruding through the open window and into her office upset people who weren’t familiar with dragons), but she thought it’d probably be a slow day meeting-wise. She wouldn’t have time for meetings, anyway. There was too much hands-on work to be done.

In response, Opal twitched his wings. Lily had barely managed to scamper up to his back before he took flight. She wrapped her arms around his neck as much as she could and hugged him as he lowered them both down to the dirt beside her office window. She cut her chin on his scales as she leaned in to give the back of his neck a kiss, but she didn’t care.

After shooting another furtive glance around, she slid off her dragon and walked up to his snout again. She leaned in and said: “You’re such a good dragon, Opal.”

He gave a guttural hum. She laughed as he blew a smoke ring out. It went over her head like a necklace. She was stroking his scales fondly again when she heard somebody clear their throat. Lily glanced over her shoulder at Ivan, her longest-employed dragon keeper. He’d worked at the reservation Lily had first joined after graduation and had followed her here, once she’d opened her own sanctuary. He looked beyond stressed.

“You’re like a ray of sunshine, you are,” he greeted. “I’m so glad to see you; I’ve been considering running off into the night like Winnie did.”

“What happened last night?” she asked at once. “What’s the story behind the new Sydney transfer?”

“Well, he’s about as difficult as they come. But…” Ivan suddenly looked incredibly eager. He grinned broadly and crossed his arms. “Dwarfism.”

Lily stared. Her heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“You were right, Lily. It exists. A Pygmy Dragon, of sorts. And we’ve got one.”

Lily rolled right off of Opal’s back. She landed deftly on her feet and hurried up to Ivan excitedly. “Seriously?! I swear if you’re taking the piss I’m going to—”

“Seriously. His flame development indicates that he’s about six years old. He’s the size of a horse.”

Lily covered her mouth with her hand. She tried to keep her excitement in perspective, but it was difficult because that was one of her major interests within the world of dragonology. She’d been searching for evidence that dragons could exhibit that trait, and after all this time, it’d shown up at her doorstep.

“Okay, so, did you get a full history, is he in quarantine right now, was the lime pox test positive, has he had a meal yet, how is he with the other dragons?”

“Lime pox was negative. He’s in quarantine. The Sydney dragon keeper said an old wizard found him napping inside his barn out towards Dalwallinu. They thought he was only a few months old until he set the barn on fire and nearly roasted them all to death. The keeper said it looked like he was trying to prove something; they’d just finished calling him ‘small and harmless’ when he set fire to everything.”

“Take me to him!” Lily said excitedly.

“Can’t. You’ve had somebody waiting in your office for an hour. I came out here to tell you that.”

Lily frowned. “Oh, no. It’s not my Uncle Charlie, is it? I told Caden I didn’t want him to call him down here! How am I meant to be successful if I run crying to my uncle at every little sign of trouble—”

“It’s not Charlie. It’s somebody here for an interview.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “An interview? I didn’t schedule an interview. I’ve hardly had time to open half the resumes I’ve gotten.”

Ivan shrugged. “She seems to think she’s supposed to be here.”

Lily said goodbye to Opal, saluted Emerald as she circled possessively above them, and then made her way into the hut. The filing cabinet to the left was so full now that the drawers couldn’t shut, thanks to all the files bulging out of it. The table that had once been for tea and coffee was groaning underneath a haphazard pile of letters. Lily’s desk—tucked in the far back corner beside the window—was blanketed with a layer of parchment, files, and used mugs. The seat in front of her desk was occupied by somebody wearing a bright pink headscarf. Opal stuffed his massive head into the opened window at once, peering curiously inside the hut; Lily watched the profile of the interviewee carefully. She didn’t jump at the sight of Opal or flinch away. Lily watched her extend her hand—veins of her wrist upwards— for Opal to sniff, and smiled. She shut the hut door behind her and marched over towards her desk.

“Hi. I’m Lily. That’s Opal,” she greeted. She sat behind her desk and extended her hand; the girl’s palm was suitably calloused as she shook Lily’s. “I didn’t schedule an interview, but you already knew that.”

The girl nodded. “No, you didn’t, I know. I sent my resume five times by owl. I’ve been waiting since I graduated. I got tired of waiting. Maybe you thought my resume wasn’t honest or maybe there was something else you didn’t like, but I want to know why because I’ve spent all my summers training and I got excellent scores on my O.W.L.s and my N.E.W.T.s and I’ve even got recommendations from your dad and Hagrid. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m perfect for this job.”

Her speech—beyond impressing Lily with her nerve—rang a bell. Lily had opened a few of the resumes last night. There had only been one that came with a recommendation from Lily’s own father.

“Adam Thomage?” She asked, puzzled. She couldn’t say she’d ever met a girl named Adam before. “Or have I somehow received two separate resumes with recommendations from my dad?”

“No, that’s mine,” she affirmed. “I used the name I was born with because I included my Ministry background check and I wanted everything to be consistent.” 

“Ooh,” Lily realized. A sudden explosion from outside the window made Opal jump. He banged his head on the top of the window sill. Lily heard shouts ringing all the way from the special handling enclosure. What now? She shifted in her seat impatiently; the reality of all the things she needed to accomplish that day had suddenly settled back on her shoulders. She needed this interview done with. “So what’s your real name?”

“Mia.”

“Do you have another copy of your resume on hand?” Lily didn’t even offer an explanation or excuse for why she didn’t have the first five Mia had sent; the chaos of her office was explanation enough.

“Yes, here,” Mia said. She passed Lily a red folder. “It’s funny…your dad’s office looks just like this.”

“Like father, like daughter, I suppose,” Lily said distractedly. She opened the folder, dropped her eyes to the girl’s N.E.W.T. scores and training certifications, and then shut it. “Great. You’re hired. The adolescents’ enclosure is five minutes that way, heading southwest. The folder hanging on the gate has all the specific information on each dragon. I’ll be by in a few hours to check in. Your shifts should usually be around eight hours, give or take a few. If you need me, I’ll almost certainly be in the special handling enclosure.”

Lily stood and grabbed the cleanest looking mug from the cluttered surface of her desk. She headed towards the tea table.

“Oh…! Great! But…just like that? What about orientation? And I wanted to talk to you about starting training to be a dragonologist, I don’t want to only be a keeper and I heard you were taking new trainees and I was hoping that with all this drama over lime pox that there would be more openings than usual. I know everybody says it’s tough to get placements here but I thought with your dad and Hagrid putting a good word in and all my experience—”

Lily carried her semi-clean mug over to the table. She picked the teapot up off the edge; by some miracle, Whittle had already made tea. Lily refilled her mug and reheated the tea with a jab of her wand. She interrupted Mia’s ongoing rambling.

“I meant as a dragonologist, eventually. You’ll start on now as a keeper and in about six months I’ll sign off on your certificate. My training is pretty hands off…that’s how my uncle taught me and it worked really well. You don’t need any orientation. Your training looked good; orientation would really just be wasting both our time, and to be honest, I don’t have any—time, that is. You had plenty of experience hours, and with Horntails, no less. If you can handle adolescent Horntails, you can deal with Opaleyes while you’re sleeping.” Mia still looked taken aback. Lily wondered suddenly if she was being socially dense; Caden said she could sometimes come off as a bit intense when she was ‘in the zone’, and the last thing she wanted was to frighten a potential new dragonologist off. Right as she was about to grit her teeth and force a polite conversation, another shout pierced the silence. She sighed. “Listen, I’ve got to run—” she gestured towards the hut door. They could both hear another voice joining in on the panicked yelling— “but we’ll meet up later and have a proper chat or something.”

Lily headed towards the door. Mia called after her, her voice brimming with excitement.

“Thank you! Thank you very much!”

Lily hoped she still felt thankful by the end of the workday.  

* * *

 

Lily found the source of all the yelling.

“I’ve _had it_ with this dragon!” greeted Sarg. He pulled his smoldering robes over his head with one quick yank; the fire he’d received from the dragon had been strong enough to wear through the fireproof charm on the fabric. His eyes widened as he took in the bright pink of his forearm. He’d sustained a first-degree burn. “Look at this! Unbelievable!”

Lily resisted the very strong urge to roll her eyes. It was difficult to feel bad for him when she was standing there harboring much worse burns. She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and withdrew her small container of burn cream. She pursed her lips against the insults she wanted to spew his way as she rubbed the cream over his skin (perhaps a bit harder than necessary). Sarg winced.

“This is good. It’ll toughen you up,” Lily said sternly. She gave his shoulder a firm slap. He glowered over her shoulder at the miniature dragon.

“I’ll take over here. I need _you_ to go get my Opal, bring him to the Quiet Room, give him his eyesight potion, and leave him in there for twenty minutes. Then, let him back out,” she ordered.

He jumped at the chance. “Going from this beast to Opal? Gladly. Bye.”

He sped off quickly (as if he feared she’d change her mind.) Lily _finally_ rolled her eyes.

She stuffed the burn cream back into her pocket and approached the railing of the new dragon’s quarantine room. It was enchanted to look and feel exactly like the outdoors, but it was surrounded by an invisible force holding the dragon (and its possible germs) in and everything else out. Sarg had said he’d spent all morning earning the dragon’s trust enough to enter the room – or so he thought. Apparently, it’d lashed out unexpectedly while he was feeding it. The bucket of raw meat was lying empty on its side inside the enclosure, the contents eaten by the dragon as soon as Sarg had retreated. Lily conjured a small notebook and a self-inking quill; she sat on the railing and watched the dragon for ten minutes, jotting down any behaviors that seemed curious.

_Pygmy Dragon_ , she wrote at the top of the page. _Six years old. Male. Bloody gorgeous scales—never been in any fights going by the condition of them. Talons have never been sanded—right one is split to the bone. Possible collar at one point? Scales are duller round the neck. Hates the tree in the back—because it’s bigger? Inferiority complex about his height?_

Lily waited until the dragon spotted her. She continued writing and gave him an opportunity to walk up to the invisible barrier and inspect her without her focusing on him.

_He’s very curious. Can smell my burns through the barrier. Uses feet to sense things more often than any other dragon I’ve seen—possible nasal issues? Wings are too small to support his chubby body and it’s actually really fucking cute (even though it’s clearly not healthy.) Very likely this dragon was kept as a ‘pet’ at some point by an idiotic yet gutsy family who liked to feed it bacon. Very likely this dragon took offense to being treated like a pet and now hates all humans. Very likely that it will still like me._

Lily waited until he grew bored with her, and then she waved her wand and stepped through the entryway that appeared in the shimmery veil. She stepped into the controlled environment of the room. It was warm and humid (like Opaleyes preferred it.) The Pygmy had wandered down to a small valley and was nesting in a pile of leaves. Lily grabbed a pair of fireproof robes just in case and headed down towards the valley. She approached him at a steady pace. She sat on a boulder halfway down the valley slope. Like she’d guessed, it didn’t take the dragon long to sense her near his nest. She saw his nostrils flare. She lifted the robes up in front of her like a shield just in time; the flames knocked into her with a force so great that her ears rung. Heat seared her cheeks and the backs of her forearms. She was glad she’d pulled her hair up and wrapped it in a fireproof bandana; it’d only just gotten past her shoulders again and she would’ve been furious if she lost it.

She waited two seconds after the flames stopped. She slowly lowered the robes. The second her eyes locked with the dragon’s, he lashed out again. She lifted the robes once more. She could feel the charm weakening. If she was sensible, she’d leave right then. But she had a feeling leaving would be the wrong thing to do.

She lowered the robes again. The dragon flared his nostrils once more. She narrowed her eyes.

“Absolutely _not_!” she said firmly. Her voice echoed around the room. The dragon had been opening his mouth to breathe more fire, but at that, he froze. Lily lowered the robes down further. She stood. He tensed; a rumbling growl began forming at the back of his throat. Lily didn’t back down. “You won’t out-stubborn me. Try me.”

His growl turned into another round of flames. Lily lifted the robes back up and tried not to think about the fact that the charm was almost useless by now. She cast a quick, temporary replacement charm on the robes, summoned another sealed container of meat, and then took another step forward. She lowered her hands to her side and turned her palms out.

“It’s all right. I get it. You’re a big boy. Not a baby. You’re big and bad and frightening.” She unsealed the lid of the container. She reached in and pulled out a palm-sized chunk of raw meat. The dragon snapped its eyes to her hand. “If you want it, you have to play nicely. It’s an important rule to learn. Not easy though, I know.”

She took it slowly, step-by-step. She threw a piece of meat towards him, took a step closer, and then waited. If he lashed out, she lifted the robe, recast a charm, and tried again. If he didn’t, she threw another chunk of meat. It took nearly an hour, but finally, she was close enough to touch his scales. Once she was up close, she could tell he was in dire need of a bath. Where ever he’d been prior to wandering into that man’s barn, he must’ve been confined; dung was caked to his scales on his hind legs and his belly. His tummy was so expanded that it nearly brushed the ground when he was sitting. No telling what sort of processed muggle meats he was being fed. Lily reached a hand up. She was so close to him that if he decided to lash out again, she’d have no hope of surviving. It’d be impossible to get the robes up in time; she’d take a direct hit to the face. Her skin would probably burn off in a second. It’d be impossible to beat his quick reaction time with her slower human one. But if she retreated, she’d probably ruin all the progress she made.

_Sod it_ , Lily thought. _Somebody’s got to do it_.

She set her palm on his scales. An ambiguous rumble formed in his chest; it could’ve been a growl or a contented hum. She forced herself to remain calm as she stroked over that same spot again.

“There, there, Big Boy…you’re doing great. Please don’t burn my face off, Big Boy. My boyfriend will bring me back to life and re-murder me if I let myself get killed by a dragon the size of a—”

His rumbling grew distinctly displeased. Lily backtracked.

“Right, sorry, sensitive about the…height thing.”

More rumbling. He was shooting her nasty looks from the side of his multicolored eye.

“I get it. You’ve got to throw your weight about. Mind you, you’ve got quite a lot of it to do that with…what were those naughty humans feeding you, eh? Sausages? I bet they were feeding you sausages.”

At the word _sausage_ , the dragon perked up. Lily laughed.

“Oh, Merlin. They were, weren’t they? I wonder what they called you. Jack? William? Josh?”

To her amazement, his eyelids drifted shut. A lazy, contented hum escaped his mouth. Lily caught on at once. She’d been wrong before; he wasn’t insulted because he’d been treated like a pet. He was insulted because he was suddenly _not_ being treated like one. Her heart swelled.

“Oh, you like being talked to, don’t you? Like a human baby. Did somebody treat you like a human baby? Coddle you and talk to you and interact with you and then suddenly cast you away when you got too big and rowdy? Did they go from letting you sleep at the bottom of their bed to chaining you outside in a stable?”

He leaned into her touch. It reminded Lily of a cat.

“You’ll be Big Boy now and you’ll stay here. I think Topaz will like you. He gets along with all the stray cats and you’re a bit cat-like. Not an insult! That’s a good thing! Lions are cats!”

Her hasty amendment came after another angry, sidelong glare from the dragon. Lily had to get Charlie here to see this dragon; he’d been working on a study for the past decade on how many English words dragons could learn, comprehend, and remember. She had a feeling this dragon was on the higher end of the scale linguistically speaking.

“Okay, we’re going to say goodbye now. Thank you for not burning my face off, Big Boy. Oh, you’re already catching onto your name, aren’t you? You’re very clever! Okay. Here,” she pulled out a measured portion of the meat and set it down on the ground in front of him. “Eat up; your diet starts tomorrow. Sorry, mate. You look a bit pregnant. And by a bit, I mean a lot.”

She gave him a comforting pat.

* * *

Over the next four hours, Lily did the following: narrowly avoided death three times, sent fifteen letters off, performed an emergency surgery on Flint, brewed an illicit batch of skin-replenishing potion which she doused her own burns in, apparated to her tattoo artist’s studio where she steadily cried throughout the entire tattooing process (due to her still-tender flesh), had a gin and tonic with said tattoo artist for lunch, apparated back, poured antiseptic and pain potion over her new tattoos, checked in on Mia, broke up a brawl between Amethyst and Copper, and then stood at the eastern edge of the sanctuary and screamed.

She hadn’t really expected it to help—she’d just lost her temper—but she found it actually did to some extent. Afterwards, her anger somewhat drained, she was mainly just exhausted. _It’s not for forever, it’s just for now. It’s not for forever, it’s just for now_. Her pep talk wasn’t working as well as it had at the start of the day, because _now_ felt pretty insufferable.

She wasn’t even _near_ ready for the words that greeted her as she crossed towards her hut.

“Aurors are here for a meeting,” Whittle warned. She was sitting on the steps outside the hut with a book and a sandwich, clearly making the best of her short lunch break. “Was that you screaming out there? Everything okay?”

“Peachy. Which Auror is it?” grumbled Lily.

“There are two this time. Wendy and Hunter.”

_Oh, great. Just what I need._ Lily groaned. She found Hunter intolerable.

“He’s brought a mediator with him, at least,” Whittle said, a smirk audible in her voice.

Lily’s heart jolted. She knew she didn’t need to get her hopes up; Caden had been helping at the prison for the past two weeks, mediating between the group of recently captured poachers and the Aurors. He hadn’t said he was moving back to the reservation rotation. But she couldn’t help it.

“Who?” she dared to ask.

Whittle lifted her book back up and smirked. Lily felt her lightly burned cheeks sear with pain as she beamed. It was the best possible thing that could’ve happened, the only thing that could’ve saved her shit day. If she walked in and it wasn’t him, she was sure she was going to have a complete tantrum comparable to her preteen days, but if it _was_ …

Her breath was lodged in her chest as she peeked into her hut. When she spotted Caden’s broad shoulders, she felt something in her chest unravel. Her muscles automatically loosened. _Okay,_ she thought. She inhaled. _Everything’s okay now._

Her joy gave way to amusement as she stepped over to her desk.

“Ms. Potter,” Caden greeted politely. He inclined his head. Lily pursed her lips and nodded back at him, dutifully ignoring the butterflies knocking around in her stomach.

“Mr. Rowle.”

His lips twitched for a moment. Lily (and everybody in her employment) kept the true nature of her and Caden’s relationship a secret because it would be considered a conflict of interest if his boss found out. He’d been signed on by the New Zealand Ministry to mediate primarily between the dragonologists/keepers and the Aurors assigned to the poaching debacle. Tensions were violently high between both groups because—in Lily’s opinion—the Aurors were fucking idiots. They kept trespassing onto reservation and sanctuary lands without permission in their pursuit of poachers and panicking at the sight of dragons; many of them took to excessively stunning the dragons, leading to the accidental murder of two. It hadn’t happened on Lily’s sanctuary yet, but she was determined it never would. She hadn’t let an Auror set foot on her property in six months, and until they all agreed to take part in her Dragon Sensitivity class (with her as the instructor), she refused to _ever again_. They were too quick to curse and bind, too quick to lash out with their wands. She wouldn’t have her dragons falling prey to cowardice.  

“Hello, Lily,” Hunter greeted. He winked. Lily saw Caden’s nose twitch up in annoyance briefly. Hunter stood and opened his arms to hug her. Lily knew better. The last time she’d hugged him he’d grabbed her arse and she’d had to bat-bogey him on Ministry property. She stared him dead in the eye and slowly sat down. He awkwardly let his arms fall to his side.

“Hi, Wendy,” Lily greeted. She lifted her coffee mug from earlier and took a sip of cold coffee (more to remind Hunter where he stood than because she genuinely wanted to drink it.) “Oh, and Hunter.”

Caden pursed his lips against what surely would’ve become a laugh had they been alone. Lily had to force her eyes from his face; she knew if she looked at him any longer, she’d inevitably end up kissing him, and that would probably blow their cover.

“Okay, I’ll start, then,” Lily said, when Wendy and Hunter failed to quickly get at whatever point they’d arrived to make. Lily didn’t have the time (or the patience, or the temperament) to sit through three minutes of polite smiles and cordial ‘how are you’s. She pointed towards the window. “26 kilometers west, 18 kilometers east, 42 kilometers south, and 10 kilometers north from this precise point. It’s all my property. Stay off it.” She stood and smiled. “Good talk.”

“No, we have _not_ made our point, and you will let us—”

Caden quickly interrupted Hunter, right as Lily felt her anger bubbling up at Hunter’s tone. Who was he to talk to her that way? He was exceedingly annoying and wet himself the first time he got within spitting distance of a dragon even though it was behind a barrier—

“We have something new to bring to the negotiation table, Ms. Potter.”

It was only the way Caden said _Ms. Potter—_ all polite on the surface but naughty beneath—that got her to sit back down. She glowered nastily at Hunter but decided to ignore him for now.

“All right then, Mr. Rowle,” Lily murmured. She saw Caden shift slightly in his seat. She grinned wickedly; she couldn’t help it. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to put on me. I mean—the table. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he agreed, a forced coolness to his tone. Lily didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she thought Wendy might’ve been shooting her annoyed looks. _Hmm,_ Lily thought, _keep an eye on that as it develops._

Caden had clearly come with a negotiation plan. Hunter clearly didn’t care.

“We want access to the south border of your sanctuary,” Hunter demanded, in that same entitled tone that got always beneath Lily’s skin.

“Oh, you do, do you?” Lily scoffed.

“Yes. And we want it now.”

Lily snorted. She looked at Caden. “Can you translate from Entitled-Arse to Polite-Professional?”

“I’m great at doing that. I’ve had _loads_ of practice.” His smirk was fleeting, but it was enough to get Lily’s heart rate up a bit. _Prick,_ she thought. She narrowed her eyes at him. He narrowed his right back. God, she wanted to kiss him, and judging by the way he’d leaned slightly forward and kept staring at her lips, he felt the same way. It took him longer than usual to get a hold of himself. “Right, so…the Aurors believe poachers will be active along the south border before the end of the month.”

“Oh, brilliant. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll bring them in once I’ve caught them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wendy sneered. “It’s not your job to do that.”

Hunter butted in again. Caden looked genuinely pained; it was obvious to all of them that his hard work in planning this negotiation had gone to waste. “We want permission to use stunning spells on any dragons that approach us, but we won’t stun any that ignore us or ones that are properly contained. We’re also going to set up camp and protective shields and we want any and all liability waived.”

Lily burst into laughter. She bent over at the waist and laughed into her thighs. By the time her laughter pandered off, Hunter’s expression had darkened.

“Merlin, you are _hilarious_ ,” she admitted. She pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling in mock-concentration. “Let me think about that…hmm…no.”

Caden leaned forward. “If you’d just allow them a small corner they could round up some of the most notorious poachers that have continually evaded capture.”

“And sign off on a waiver that says they can ultimately do whatever they like to my dragons?! Absolutely not! Over my dead, burnt body! I’m not an idiot. I know that ‘any dragons that approach us’ will rapidly turn into any dragon they happen to spot. I’ve been very explicit about what it would take to allow them on my property, and I am _not_ going to be moved from that. I don’t need their sodding help. I took down more poachers in one night with nearly 25% of my body covered in third-degree burns than your lot took down in three months, and I didn’t have to stun any of my dragons to do it. I can do it on my own.”

“Realistically, Lily,” Caden said. Lily felt her heart lurch at the sound of her given name; it seemed oddly intimate in their current situation. “You can’t keep doing their job and yours.”

And he was right—of course he was right—but she didn’t like being told what she could or couldn’t do.

“I can and I _will_ ,” she repeated. “Just watch me. Mr. Rowle.”

His eyes burned into hers. She found it impossible to look away. “I think it’s safe to say…Ms. Potter…that there are probably people at your home that miss you. All these twenty-four-hour shifts you’re working…forgive me for presuming that I know what your home life is like, but I’m _positive_ there’s somebody who’s hurting over all of this. It’s not… _livable_. The way your work schedule is right now. Or so I’ve heard, anyway, from your colleagues.”

Lily grimaced. She hated that she was already wavering. One secretive concerned-boyfriend play and she felt her heart softening. Bollocks. Maybe the Auror office _did_ know about their relationship; maybe they’d sent him for this precise reason. She was undeniably the hardest negotiator of all the dragonologists in the area.

“Well, it’s not forever, is it? Just for right now,” Lily countered. Then, as an afterthought: “Tell my colleagues to stop gossiping about me.”

“If you die in the ‘right now’ it _is_ forever. For you and for whomever you might have at home.”

“Oh, that’s dramatic. What is this: a soap opera?”

“Yeah, like that episode where the boyfriend comes home after a long day in the office to find his girlfriend passed out with severe injuries, injuries that she described as ‘annoying like a papercut’ when they last spoke.”

“I think I missed that episode.”

“Must be nice for you,” he said coolly.

Lily pressed her lips together tightly. She felt such a strange tangle of emotions: guilt, concern, anger that he was using their personal lives during this negotiation (even though she knew, deep down, that the time had come long ago for something to be done), longing for him, subconscious annoyance at Wendy who was _still_ shooting suspect looks his way, impatience to get back to work, dread when she thought about going back to work…

It was way too much. The difficult day didn’t help. Caden obviously knew this (his eyes had softened) and he relented appropriately.

“They’ll take your class. Your Dragon Sensitivity class.”

His declaration made Hunter and Wendy snap their eyes to him, outraged.

“What? We’re not doing that! We told you before we’re _not_ doing that!” Wendy exclaimed, with Hunter nodding to back her up. “Our jobs have _nothing_ to do with dragons!”

“They do when you’re on this assignment. It’s her property. That’s what she wants. And I told you both time and time again that there was no way she was going to sign that liability waiver. If you want access to her reservation, you’re going to have to take the class. But, Ms. Potter, if they take the class, they need permission to go wherever they need to on the sanctuary in pursuit of poachers. Give and take, yeah? I’m very professional about this. About my job serving you. And the Aurors. I wouldn’t suggest that you take this deal if I didn’t think it’d be mutually beneficial.”

Had she loved him just a bit less, she might’ve been torn between her dislike of Hunter (and the corresponding desire to go against literally anything and everything he wanted) and her desire to make her life easier (which, to be honest, allowing the Aurors back on her property would do. If they were there, she wouldn’t have to insist somebody was working at all times.) But because she loved him so much that it sometimes drove her a bit mad, it was easy to pick the latter over her hatred of Hunter. Because it wouldn’t only be benefiting her. They shared a life now, really; there was no other way to put it. What ruined her day ruined his and vice versa. It wasn’t just about her anymore.

“I expect satisfactory completion of the training. Once that’s done, sure. They can have free access _with conditions.”_

_“_ Brilliant,” Wendy said. Hunter looked less thrilled. Lily summoned parchment and a quill over towards herself so she could begin writing those conditions, and when she glanced back to them, she saw Wendy had her hand on Caden’s thigh. She was whispering something to him, her lips curled up in a smile. He looked supremely uncomfortable. Lily’s jaw clenched. Even as a little voice was telling her not to overreact, she’d stood from her chair. She circled around her desk and sat on the edge facing Caden and the Aurors, so the desk wasn’t between them. She was smiling tightly as she leaned over and took Wendy’s hands in hers (still on Caden’s upper thigh). She squeezed the woman’s fingers tightly.

“Everybody’s friends. How lovely,” she said. Wendy looked at her, annoyed and confused. She pulled gently at her hands. Lily tightened her grip around Wendy’s fingers. “Shall we all get drinks? Pedicures? Coffee?” Wendy tugged harder at their joined hands. Lily opened her fingers and let her fall back into her chair. “Don’t contact me for plans, I’ll contact you.”

Lily refused to look away from Wendy; she was going to make her look away first. It felt like a dominance thing. When Wendy finally dropped her eyes, Lily crossed her legs at the ankle and righted the parchment in her lap.

“Right. First of all, if you hurt any of my dragons, you’re gone. Immediately. No excuses…”

As she wrote out all her demands and stipulations, she spotted Wendy doing a variety of unforgivable things: scooting closer to Caden, leaning into his side, laughing too loudly at his jokes. When she reached up and brushed his hair from his eyes, Lily genuinely thought she might hit her. Her jealousy was quick to come to life and difficult to kill. _Don’t lash out,_ she told herself. She took a deep, measured breath. She locked eyes with Caden. He nodded at her once as if to say ‘you can do it’. _Remove yourself from the situation. Don’t lash out…_

“I’ll just give this contract to you, Wendy, and you can both leave immediately,” Lily finally said, her voice pulled tight in her irritation.

“I’ll take that,” Caden said quickly. He rose from his seat right as Wendy reached up to touch his hair again. _How dare she touch his hair_ , Lily seethed. She ground her teeth together. Caden took the contract from her and then leaned casually against the desk. He pretended to look over it; Lily knew he was faking because his brow always furrowed slightly when he was actually reading. “Right, there are a few more things I’d like to talk to Ms. Potter about. I’ll see you both at the Ministry later.”

Lily couldn’t help but feel smug. She watched Wendy and Hunter walk from the hut, both shooting glances back over their shoulders at Lily and Caden. As soon as the door shut behind them, Lily looked up at Caden. She was about to start ranting about how much she hated Wendy when he moved to stand in front of her. His eyes were focused in a way that made her heart flutter. She grinned as he set his hands on her knees and pried her legs open, stepping in between them. His lips pressed to hers, hard and hot, and she was all too eager to comply as he leaned forward and forced her onto her back on the cluttered desk. She looped her legs around his hips and ignored the pain of an inkpot digging into her left shoulder blade as his lips moved to her neck. She felt extremely possessive as she pulled her fingers through his hair. He was _hers_ to touch, not Wendy’s. 

“She needs to keep her nasty hands off you,” Lily grumbled. She jumped slightly as Caden pressed his hand against her hip where her new tattoo was. He moved his hand up to her waist and sucked just above her collarbone; she let her eyes shut, but she still wasn’t shutting her mouth. “What’s this about, anyway? I should be the one pressing you into a desk; Hunter didn’t so much as touch me whereas Wendy had her hands in your _hair_.”

“Fuck them,” he said. She was a bit taken aback to find his voice brimming with emotion. “This has sod all to do with them. I miss you so much, Lily.”

“Me too,” she admitted. “You, I mean. I miss you.”

She still wasn’t entirely certain what had gotten into him, but as he pulled her vest up and kissed her ribs, she wasn’t very bothered. She thought about her morning. She wondered what he would’ve said if he found out how many times she’d probably narrowly avoided certain death. Maybe he already knew; that would explain the soft, open mouth kisses he was pressing over her new tattoos, the firm, possessive grasp he had on her hips, the impatient tremble of his fingers as he undid the button on her jeans. And it was impossible to think of much else as he tugged her jeans down her hips. This certainly wasn’t the sort of work she’d expected to get done on her desk today, but she was far from complaining. She was already breathless in anticipation, her heart bursting and her fingers buried in his hair, when the hut door squeaked open.

“Ms. Potter, there’s—oh _Merlin_!”

Mia slapped her hands over her eyes. Caden lowered his forehead to Lily’s abdomen and sighed in defeat. Lily propped herself up on her elbows.

“Oops,” Lily said.

“I’ll...I…I…” Mia seemed to have shut down. Lily nudged Caden with her knee when he failed to move from between her legs. He stood but kept his back to the door, probably both to give Lily a bit of cover and protect his modesty. She lifted her hips from the desk and tugged her jeans back up.

“Well, introductions are probably due…Mia, this is Caden. Caden, this is Mia, my new dragonologist trainee.” 

“Hello,” Caden said, his back still to the girl.

“Hi,” she squeaked. “Ms. Potter, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that…er…”

“We actually didn’t either or we would’ve locked it ahead of time,” Lily admitted. She wondered what the appropriate thing to say to make this better was. She looked at Caden.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized to Mia. “It was extremely unprofessional of us.”

_There we go_. Lily jumped off his apology. “Yeah, sorry.”

“That’s…okay,” she said. She was looking at them oddly.

“I’m her boyfriend. Not just a random Ministry worker,” Caden added.

“Oh. That’s…nice. Er. I was just coming to tell you that you’ve got a visitor…”

Then, to Lily’s horror, her Uncle Charlie stepped into the hut.

“Hi, Lulu. Hi, Caden,” he greeted, smiling, entirely indifferent to the suspicious scene he’d walked in on.

Lily’s first reaction was to smack Caden’s shoulder. “I told you not to tell him!!”

Caden smacked her arm right back. “I didn’t! I only contacted him last night because I was worried about you! I didn’t tell him to come here!”

“He truly didn’t, Lily. I’ve got loads of other contacts here, you know,” her uncle reminded her. He walked over to the kettle and reheated it. “You should’ve told me how bad things had gotten.”

“I’m handling it.”

“Really? Because from what _I hear_ , you’re working inhumane shifts without breaks and getting _more_ devastating burns due to your exhaustion.”

Lily crossed her arms stubbornly as her uncle walked over to her. He got right to the point.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” her uncle told her sternly. “I’m sending three keepers and two dragonologists down here for the season. Things are much better in Romania; our poaching never got out of hand and it’s been nearly eradicated. I’ve got plenty of help. You need it.”

“No!” Lily complained.

“Yes. And what’s this I heard about you cancelling your Portkey home?! You haven’t been back since Christmas. Your mum gets grumpier every day, and your dad’s in a state. It’s little Delilah’s first birthday tomorrow!”

“And I planned on going back for it, didn’t I?! It just didn’t work out the way I hoped it would. I can’t possibly leave now, Charlie, I can barely find time to have a wee!”

Charlie set his hands on her shoulders. She refused to look at him.

“Which is why I’m sending help. I’ll stay here until you get back from London. This is ridiculous, Lily. This is not how I trained you. We’ve had loads of talks about not burning yourself out.”

Lily resisted the urge to mock his words. She knew he was right. She was still refusing to look at him as he reached towards Caden and handed him something.

“Here.”

“Charlie, this plane leaves in _three hours_.”

“Better hurry, then.”

Lily gestured angrily. “You can’t just expect us to drop everything and leave without any notice…!”

“You’ve got notice. Three hours of it.” Lily glowered. Charlie patted her shoulder. “You’re my favorite niece, Lily. If you won’t take care of yourself, I’ll do it for you. I know how obsessive and lonely this job can make you if you let it.”

Lily scowled, but she’d never really had much interest in arguing with her uncle Charlie. He was always right. And truthfully, she’d spent most of her life respecting him to a level of slight reverence.

“I’ve only _just_ made progress with our new dragon,” she complained.

“I can take over where you left off. Notes?”

Lily pulled the pages from her back pocket. She handed them over to Charlie with some reluctance.

“I didn’t write it down, but he’s called ‘Big Boy’, and you have to talk to him all the time and you _can’t_ call him tiny or short or cat-like,” she grumbled. She crossed her arms again.

Charlie looked at her, amused. Caden snorted.

“This is why we love you.”

* * *

 

“I’ll pack food if you’ll pack our clothes.”

“Deal,” Lily said at once. She ventured into their bedroom, summoned a giant suitcase, and began dumping the clothes from the chest-of-drawers in there first. Her underwear, his, pajamas…

“Lil? Can you pack my rock case?” Caden yelled. “I told Finnigan I’d bring it next time we visited.”

Lily rolled her eyes fondly. Finnigan just thought Caden was cool; he didn’t care anything about semi-precious rocks. Still, she walked over to the window and grabbed the display case holding the products of her and Caden’s recent (but sadly neglected) hobby: rock collecting. Or, as Lily thought of it, a rock competition, since they both had a list of every type of rock and mineral native to the area and were racing to see who could collect them all first. Lily supposed the weird hobby was really her fault; her Christmas gift had turned his passive interest into an active one. When they first came back here, before things got so hectic, they spent many weekends indulging the competitive hobby. She was about to put the case into the suitcase when the latch at the top popped open. Lily cursed loudly as all the rocks and gemstones went tumbling out into the opened suitcase.

“Everything okay?” he yelled.

“Yep! Yep—fine!” Lily called back. She kneeled down and dug her hands into the suitcase. They’d disappeared into the dark depths; sodding extension charm. “Fuck.”

“You’ve dumped them, haven’t you?”

“No! No, I’ve just…packed them in an alternative way!”

“Just throw the case in with it and we’ll deal with it later. Don’t forget your glasses.”

“Yeah, all right,” she allowed. “ _Nag_ ,” she whispered underneath her breath.

“Do you want me to make coffee for the ride there?” he asked.

“Fuck yes. With firewhisky?”

“Already pouring it in.”

“I fucking love you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lily gathered as many of the rocks as she could find, stuffed them back into the case, and then set the case inside the suitcase. She threw all of Caden’s favorite articles of clothing in, threw in a few outfits for herself, and then did a once over of the bedroom.

“Oh,” she said. She walked over and snatched his bird-watching book from the sofa in front of the window. “Can’t forget his old man hobby.”

“LILY, CAN YOU GET MY—”

“OLD MAN BIRD-STALKING BOOK? GOT IT.”

She shoved her favorite blanket on top of everything, grabbed another bag as the carry-on, and then packed their toiletries in a rush. Caden stepped into the bathroom right as she dropped her hairbrush in the bag. He reached over and stuffed their food for the plane into it.

“We’ve got to hurry. Did you get your glasses?”

“Sure,” Lily dismissed, her mind on the time. She hardly heard him. “Let’s go.”

They’d just collapsed down onto the bus seats when Caden turned to her, an eyebrow cocked.

“Lily. Did you get your glasses?”

Lily’s heart sank. She wouldn’t be able to take her eyesight potion with her on the airplane and her dose was due to wear off in a couple hours. “Oh, _fuck_.”

He was smirking as he withdrew them from his pocket. Lily smacked his arm, but she was smiling as she leaned in to kiss him.

* * *

 

After nearly thirty-one hours of traveling, Lily and Caden finally arrived at James and Nora’s doorstep.

“It always feels like we’ve gone back in time,” Caden yawned, his eyes on his wristwatch. Thanks to London being thirteen hours behind them, they’d _barely_ managed to make it in time to kiss Delilah goodnight on her birthday. The party had been missed, of course; they’d spent the entire day traveling. The Muggles really had a horrible setup travel wise. Though Lily supposed there was one good thing about it: she and Caden had gotten to curl up together and sleep uninterrupted for ages, free from all other responsibilities. That hadn’t happened in months.

“I hope they’re still awake,” Lily said.

“We should’ve warned everybody ahead of time.”

“No, I like surprising them.” Lily knocked hard on the door. “It’s much more fun this way.”

When the door opened, it wasn’t her brother. Dean blinked, surprised.

“Lily, Caden. Hello.” He was trying to keep a hold on Finnigan, but he was squirming and ranting about not being ‘ready’ for bedtime. His complaints gave way to a ragged gasp.

“AUNTIE _LULU_!” he shrieked. He dove from Dean’s arms; Lily caught him neatly and returned his tight hug, her heart incredibly full.

“Hello, Finnigan! Merlin, look how tall you’ve gotten!” Lily exclaimed. She set him on the ground and sized him up. It was always amazing to her how quickly kids grew. He immediately held out his bicep.

“I am _so strong_ ,” he told her seriously. He screwed his face in concentration and moved his arm up and down. Lily guessed he was trying to flex. Lily reached over and squeezed his little arm.

“Wow! Look at that!” Lily humored him.

“I’m four!” He remembered something suddenly. “Hey! You missed my party!”

Lily and Caden exchanged a quick look. They’d guessed on the plane that Finnigan would be the hardest to earn the forgiveness of.

“Yeah, okay, I did, but I sent you a _wicked_ gift,” Lily defended. She leaned over and lifted him back up. He laughed as she poked his tummy. “You didn’t send _me_ a gift _or_ come to my party, and my birthday was three days before yours!”

Finnigan’s jaw dropped comically. “Oh… _wellllll…_ that’s because…I have it for you right now!” he lied.

Lily snickered. “Really? Where? In your pocket?”

“No! Right _here_ ,” he said, and then he leaned in and kissed both of Lily’s cheeks and gave her a tight hug. Lily tried not to melt. She was really proud of her ability to remain immune to baby fever and contagious kid cuteness. But she had really missed him.

“Do you like it?” he asked happily.

Lily leaned in and kissed his forehead. She ruffled his hair right afterwards. “I do like it.”

“I think mine was better than yours,” Finnigan mused.

Lily tossed him up into the air, annoyed. He was giggling as she caught him. “I wouldn’t go that far…I sent you a miniature dragon.”

Finnigan rested his head sweetly on her shoulder. “He sleeps on my pillow every night.”

“Aww. You know, your Harry had one just like it when he was a kid. But his was a _Horntail_.”

“ _Wicked_ ,” Finnigan breathed.

“Caden,” James said, surprised. He had clearly come to see what was taking Dean so long at the door. “Lulu! What…? Is everything okay?”

“She came to see _me_ ,” Finnigan told his dad. He puffed his chest out proudly.

Lily ruffled her nephew’s hair again. “Actually, Ego Boy, we came to see the birthday girl.”

“Is that Lily?” Lily heard Nora ask, her voice drifting from somewhere inside the house.

“LULU?!” Evra called. “Rory, come meet Auntie Lulu! Her whole entire body is _art_!”

The adults laughed. Lily knocked her unburnt hip into Caden’s. “Why don’t you ever compliment me like that? Call my body a work of art?”

Caden appraised her, taking the time to look her up and down. He scrunched up his nose. “Eh.”

Lily was laughing as she shoved him. James was in the process of jokingly lecturing Caden on how to ‘talk to your lady’ when the rest of the Potters crowded the doorway. Plus a blonde. Evra and Henry pounced on Lily while the blonde hung back uncertainly. Evra finished hugging Lily and then glanced back at the blonde little girl.

“Rory, this is our Auntie Lulu!” Evra said excitedly. She pulled the little girl over by her hand. Rory smiled shyly. “Auntie Lulu, this is Aurora, she’s your brand new niece! She likes to be called Rory.”

Lily struggled to keep her amused laughter at bay. Evra looked so incredibly in her element as she looked after the younger girl; it was adorable. Lily kneeled down and offered Rory her hand. Rory giggled as she reached out and shook Lily’s, as if it was the funniest thing an adult had done in a long time.

“Well, come inside, yeah?” Dean said. “We can continue the reunion in there.”

Caden hoisted Henry up onto his hip. Henry’s language skills had exploded in their absence; he was talking on and on as they all walked towards the sitting room.

“You be at _my_ party?” Henry asked them. Lily collapsed down onto the sofa beside Caden; their nieces and nephews immediately climbed up beside them and onto their laps. Lily glanced at Caden quickly.

“In October? I don’t know, Henry…” Caden said.

“Yes you do know,” Lily told Caden. They would definitely be in New Zealand; that was one of the busiest times (it was usually when the eggs from the primary mating season hatched). She rolled her eyes. _Merlin,_ she found herself thinking. _If we have kids, he’s going to_ have _to toughen up…wait, what the fuck?_ “Oh, no. Great.”

“What? Your burns?” asked Caden, concerned.

“No. I’m just fucking infected. It’s these sodding Potter kids and their damn dimples.”

“ _Lily!”_ James exploded. “Language!!”

“With lime pox?!” Evra cried.

“No! Just—nevermind. It’s a temporary illness, it’ll go away by tomorrow. Anyway, Henry, we won’t be here in October. I’m sorry. We’ll send you a gift, though!”

“I be this many.” He held up seven fingers with an eighth sort of half up and half down. Caden gently lowered all his fingers but three.

“That many,” he corrected.

“No. This many,” Henry lifted up six and a half.

“…Okay, sure. That many.” Caden lifted up the same amount on his own hands. Henry grinned.

“Wanna play with me?” he asked Caden, his eyes dancing. “Dwagon skull.”

“Sure, Henry, I’ll play dragon school with…” he caught Nora’s eye. “Oh, I think I see Mummy shaking her head. Better ask her.”

Henry turned his pleading eyes to his mum.

“Mummy, I play dwagon skull with Cade?”

Nora smiled softly at him. “No, honey bear. You’ve got to go to bed. It’s _way_ past your bedtime.”

“I’m sleeping in Auntie Lulu’s bed!!” Finnigan declared.

“Me too! Me too, Mummy! Me too!” Henry cried. He tugged on Caden’s hand. “Cade too?”

“Definitely ‘Cade too’, but as for you two, that’s a ‘big no’,” Lily told them. Their faces fell.

“Awww!!” they lamented. “Please!!”

“Mummy’s right,” James sang. He stooped over and stomped dramatically over to the sofa. He gave a hilariously inept impression of a bear growl. “First bear to the top of the stairs gets extra honey in the morning!!”

It worked. Lily couldn’t _believe_ it worked. All his kids fell for it—even Finnigan. They took off running up the stairs, shrieking and giggling, trying to beat James to the top. Lily shook her head. She propped her feet up on the coffee table and let her head fall against Caden’s shoulder. The shame of it.

“If _we_ have—” she stopped abruptly. “Fuck!!”

“What?”

“Nevermind! Fuck Merlin sideways!”

“No thanks.”

They lapsed into silence. Caden looked down at her. She met his inquisitive gaze.

“Were you…”

She looked away. “No.”

“Were you going to say…—”

“No!”

“Were you going to say ‘if we have kids, I hope they’re not that gullible?’”

“No!!” Lily exclaimed. Caden arched an eyebrow. She hated how well he knew her. “…I was going to say—in this _entirely hypothetical situation_ —that I hope they’d be more cunning and perceptive.”

Caden gave her an odd look. He set his hand on her forehead a moment later. “Have you got the pox?”

Lily punched his shoulder hard. He retaliated by reached out and grasping her shoulders tightly. He pressed her back into the sofa and kissed her soundly.

“Not on my sofa!” James complained. Lily heard him step back into the sitting room. “Nora, they’re waiting for their goodnight kisses from you.”

“On it.”

“I mean it,” James said sternly. “You two get carried away way too easily and I’m not having you shagging in my family home!!”

“Guess we’re not staying here tonight, then,” Lily murmured against Caden’s lip. He chuckled.

“Anyway, look! Look who woke up to see you two! Look at my birthday girl,” James said proudly. Lily and Caden immediately separated and turned towards James. Lily beamed widely at the sight of her youngest niece; she had grown so much in the seven months they’d been apart.

“Delilah!!” Caden said. “Happy birthday!”

She didn’t look too sure (or eager to visit with them at all.) It _had_ been a very long time since she’d seen them. She clung to James when he tried to set her down.

“She’s going through her separation anxiety phase,” James warned them. “And it’s been a while since she’s seen you guys, so she probably regards you as unfamiliar people, so don’t be too demanding with her and don't take it personally.” He kissed Delilah’s cheek and whispered something. Delilah laughed. He set her down on the carpet. “Show them how graceful you are, darling!!”

She didn’t look graceful. Lily had to press her hand against her new burns to keep from laughing as Delilah took three unsteady steps on her chubby little legs and then face-planted the carpet. She sat up, shocked.  
  
“ _Dada!!”_ she wailed, horrified, as if she’d just fallen from a great height. She reached up for James, her big eyes swimming in tears. “Dada!”

James rushed to her side, but he didn’t lift her. He kneeled, kissed her tears away, and then helped her stand again. “You can do it, dearest! You can do it!” he encouraged.

Emboldened by her dad’s faith in her, and with an adorable determination, Delilah tried again. Caden was absolutely _beaming_ by the time she made it to them. James lifted her up in a proud embrace.

“That’s my girl!!” James cooed. She giggled as her dad showered her in kisses. He looked at them a moment later. “Don’t worry, she’ll warm up to you soon enough. Give her food and she’ll be yours for life. Just like Daddy, isn’t that right, love?”

Delilah smiled. “Dada,” she cooed lovingly. James puffed out his chest with pride; it reminded Lily of Finnigan.

Caden reached into his pocket at once. “I’ve got…a package of crisps and a mint.”

“What do you say, Delilah?” James asked. He set Delilah down on the carpet by Caden and Lily’s feet. “Does that fit the bill?”

Caden leaned over and offered her the bag. Delilah stared at him for a moment with wide eyes. After inspecting him, he seemed to pass some sort of test; she reached out and grabbed onto his knee, using it to hoist herself back up. She took the bag hesitantly. When she realized how crinkly it was, she laughed, overjoyed. She lifted it up and made it crinkle noisily again as if to show Caden.

“I see that, wow!” he said, the very epitome of softness. It was oddly and unfairly attractive. “Very nice!”

Lily leaned in. Delilah turned her gaze to her aunt. “Delilah, can you say _Lulu_? Lu-lu?”

“Dada.”

“No— _lulu._ ”

Delilah looked around for James. She smiled happily as she spotted him sitting in the armchair only a few feet away. “Dada!” she exclaimed. James blew her a kiss.

Lily sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Caden opened the crisps for Delilah. After she slobbered all over a few them and gnawed on them until they were a disgustingly soggy mess that she could chew and swallow, she finally reached out for Lily. Which would’ve been okay…if her hands weren’t covered in soggy crisps.

“Ugh!” Lily cried. She accepted the child, but she held her away from her clothes until James cleaned her hands off. “Nope. Over it. Completely and _utterly_ over it.”

* * *

 

Lily coughed hard as she and Caden spun into Aster’s fireplace. She pushed their suitcase into the dark kitchen and peered around.

“Aster!! Honey, I’m home!”

Lily brushed soot from Caden’s hair as footsteps approached. The candles lining the walls caught flame. Lily turned to see Aster standing in the doorway in her dressing gown, her hand on her hip.

“And what sort of time do you call _this_ , Lily Potter?”

Lily grinned. They were shrieking happily and hugging each other a few seconds later.

“Hey, Hugh,” Caden greeted. Lily could hear a smile in his voice, and when she glanced over Aster’s shoulder, she saw her sleepy cousin and Caden sharing a quick hug.

“What are you doing here?!” Aster asked excitedly.

Lily leaned back from her. “We came to see our little toddling niece!”

“‘ _Our_?’” Caden mocked. Lily kicked his shin lightly.

“Aww! Look at you! Such a good little auntie.”

“Well, I do try my best to make up for the time I lost Evra at the Burrow.”

“It’s so late! You must be so tired! Did your Portkey just get in?”

“No, we had to take a muggle plane. It’s a long story. Can we stay here? James said Caden and I weren’t allowed to shag under his roof and I wasn’t ready to make that sort of commitment. We can stay with Al after tonight but James said he has to get up early for work so we didn’t want to wake them.”

“Of course James made that rule,” Aster said, amused. “And of course you two can stay! We missed you so.”

Lily and Caden switched friends. She hugged her cousin and then reached up to pinch his cheek. He smacked her hand away.

“My little Hugo staying the night at a girl’s flat,” she cooed. “Are you two living together then? You never said!”

“Er…about that…” Aster said. She stepped back from her and Caden’s hug. “Listen…and don’t get angry, because I tried to ring you, only you didn’t answer your pocket phone, but I guess that’s because you were on the plane…”

“Oh, I haven’t even turned it back on yet. Actually…where _is it_ …” Lily trailed off, troubled.

“Lily. Hugo and I are getting married!”

Lily stared.

“That’s wonderful!” Caden congratulated. Hugo clapped him on the shoulder and grinned broadly. Lily continued staring.

“Er…Lily?” Caden pressed.

“Like…marriage-married?” she asked flatly.

“Right,” Aster said.

“But…you only just got together!”

“We’ve been together for nine months, Lily!” Hugo said. “People can make entire new human beings in that length of time!”

“What do you think?! You’re my maid of honor, _of course_ ,” Aster told her.

Lily wasn’t sure how she felt. Stunned, if she had to put a word to it. But she was glad that it was Hugo that Aster was marrying.

“You’ll finally be in the family, so that’s nice,” Lily said. She grabbed the suitcase and set off towards the guest room she often stayed in. “Night!”

* * *

 

She was in bed when Caden entered the room around an hour later. She pretended she was asleep. He fell down directly on top of her; Lily grunted in pain and kneed his hip. He tapped at her face.

“Lily, you’re not asleep,” he said.

Lily caught a whiff of alcohol. She shoved at his shoulders and pushed him off of her. “Are you drunk?!”

“I had to drink for both of us! You walked off—rudely! Very rudely you walked off! And left me to do the congratulation thing for both of us!”

Lily peered at him in disbelief. “I can’t believe you got drunk without me! You _traitor_!”

She rolled over so her back was to him and pulled a pillow over her head. She wasn’t _really_ upset about the drinking; she just felt bad about being left out of the drinking party, even if she’d been the one to leave. She must’ve hurt Aster and Hugo’s feelings without meaning to. She’d have to apologize in the morning and figure out how to explain herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to get married; it was just that she felt like life was spinning faster and faster and she could hardly keep up, and seeing things like this—her childhood best friend getting _engaged_ —made that constant progression even more glaring. As soon as she got really comfortable, things changed again.

And maybe there was a tiny part of her that worried what this would make Caden think about. Would he realize what Lily had known her entire life—that she wasn’t the typical housewife type and never would be? As he aged, would he begin to find her unconventionality less and less endearing? Would he want somebody like Aster or Nora, women who were soft at the edges, who seemed to always know the right thing to say, the right thing to do? Women who could make everybody feel at home. What if (and it felt like her heart was falling to her toes) he decided he wanted a normal, quaint life? He couldn’t have that with her. Everybody knew that. He knew that. Maybe it was only a matter of time before he decided to cut his losses. And she knew instinctively that she would never recover from that. And she didn’t think she was being dramatic to think that, either. Even _imagining_ him leaving her now, after she’d split her heart open for him, made her feel sick. And what would happen with Aster and Hugo? Maybe they’d like whoever he dated next more than they liked her. Maybe she’d lose everybody.

She was so busy feeling sorry for herself preemptively that she hardly felt his kiss to her cheek. When he reached his hand beneath her nightie and focused his kisses on her neck, she had to remind herself not to lean into his touch. She was supposed to be angry with him. For what he might do in the future. Or something.

“Don’t be angry with me,” he murmured.

“Hmph.”

His hands caressed her skin reverently. His kisses turned tender. Lily shuffled back against him without meaning to; she _hmph_ ed again even as he spooned her and kissed her cheekbone.

“You _are_ a work of art,” he whispered. His palm settled over her newest tattoo. Lily’s eyelids fluttered shut as his hand slid down and pushed between her thighs. “What’s really wrong?”

Drunk and he could still read her like a book. She wasn’t even surprised. She was finding it difficult to hold onto her irritation. “I’m not happy right now.”

“I can make you happy,” he said. His tone was remarkably flirty for the late hour, especially considering how much traveling they’d done.

“I mean it,” she said. Even his hand rubbing her inner thigh didn’t take her mind off it. “I’m…” Sad? Frightened? “Upset.”

She was glad she’d gotten to a place where she could admit her ‘weaker’ emotional states to him, because she couldn’t imagine keeping the way she was feeling now a secret.

“Why?”

“Because. Because I’m not Aster. Or Nora.”

“No, you’re Lily,” he said at once. She tilted her head further to the left as he moved his lips back to her neck, exposing more skin. She shivered as he sucked over that same spot he had ages ago in her office.

“And I can’t be like them,” she continued, her voice small.

“Thank Merlin for that,” he whispered gruffly.

“But one day you’ll want a nice girl.”

“You are _very nice_ ,” he murmured. His fingers tugged teasingly at the waistband of her knickers.

“I’m trying to have an emotional conversation here and you’re just trying to—oh, great. This is probably how you feel all the time, isn’t it?” Lily realized. “I do this to you when I’m sober.”

“You _are_ nice,” he persisted.

“You know what I mean. I’ll never host proper dinner parties. I’ll never be…” she searched for the right word. She failed to find it. “I’ll never be anybody but me. And you’re going to wake up one day and realize that you want a wife who can wear white convincingly and lay a table and…and…get along with everybody. And the truth is, when I think about my future, I can’t envision anybody else standing in your place. ‘Cause you’re perfect for me. But maybe I’m not perfect for you.”

She was proud of her speech because she felt she’d put her pain into words well. It wasn’t often that she was able to communicate her emotions so clearly. So when Caden laughed, she felt incredibly wounded. She reached between her legs and removed his hand. His laugh turned into a complaint as she scooted away from him.

“No, I’m not—Lily, come back. C’mon. I’m not laughing at what you said. Well, I _am,_ but that’s because you’re the most insecure egomaniac I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

She refused to even look at him. He reached over and grabbed her waist. She was sniffling against tears as he dragged her back against him. His cheek nuzzled against hers; his slight stubble scratched her skin. He wrapped his arms around her waist and took her hands in his. Lily pressed her teary eyes into the pillow as he lifted their joined hands and kissed hers.

“I’d marry you right now,” he whispered. “Wouldn’t even have to think about it.”

“You would not,” she sniffed.

“Yes, I really, really would.”

Lily sniffed again against her burning nose. He pushed a leg through both of hers and held her tighter.

“I don’t want to ever live without you,” Lily admitted, and in her mind, that realization was much more important than any idea of marriage. She didn’t much care for the idea of a wedding—never had, not even as a little girl—and didn’t think it really meant much in the end. But _that_ acknowledgment? That she wanted him not for the rest of the week or a year or five—but for however many she might have left? That seemed to her, in that moment, much more momentous than saying _‘I do’_.

“I don’t intend to ever make you. Where is this coming from? What did you think would happen? I’d hear that Aster and Hugo are getting married and suddenly have a complete personality switch? If you think I didn’t know exactly who I was getting involved with when we first kissed, you’re wrong. It’s why I liked you so much in the first place. And if you think we’ve made it this far—after all the shit we’ve been through—without me planning on and looking forward to dealing with the full extent of _you_ for as long as you’ll have me, you’re delusional.” 

Lily sniffled. “How are you still so well-spoken when you’re pissed?”

“I speak from my heart, not my head,” he murmured, his words falling against the curve of her neck as he leaned down to kiss her again.

“Ew…your flirting just took a turn towards nauseating,” Lily muttered. She smiled, though, when he kissed her shoulder. “Any chance you’ll forget about this conversation in the morning?”

“Nope. This is prime teasing material. Only you could make your best friend’s engagement so totally and completely about you.”

Lily smacked his hand. “I take it all back…you can marry and annoy whomever you’d like, you prick.”

He leaned over and kissed the corner of her lips. He brushed her hair back from her face as he whispered: “Shall I marry Wendy?”

Lily knocked her body back into his hard enough to send him over onto his back. She was glowering as she sat astride him. She gripped his face tightly and kissed him; he was grinning like an idiot into the kiss, not that she was surprised. He wasn’t the best at their bickering game when he was drunk anymore. Ever since they’d moved in together seven months ago, he’d turned into the happiest and flirtiest drunk she’d ever seen.   

“No you shan’t. You’ve got two options: me or nobody.”

“Well, I think Nobody is beautiful and clever and fit, but—”

Lily interrupted his words with another kiss, her hands seeking his out. She intertwined their fingers and pinned his hands above his head, their kiss deepening.

“—But she’s no Lily,” he completed breathlessly, his hair a bit wayward, his eyes sparkling. “Nobody is or even comes close.”

And, well. There was no way Lily could argue with that logic.

* * *

 

She woke up first that morning, spent an hour panicking in the flour-dusted kitchen over what was meant to be an apology cake, and then she was joined by her hungover boyfriend. She pointed at the table where a mug was waiting for him.

“Tea mixed with pain potion. What does this look like to you?”

She held up the cake. Caden choked on the sip of tea he’d taken.

“An arse?” he croaked.

“Not this again! No, it’s a _heart_! See, and here it says...‘happy engagement, sorry, love you both.’”

“It actually says H-P-Y engagement, S-R-Y, L-U-V U.”

“Aster will know exactly what it says! I’m about to throw it in your face.”

Aster and Hugo entered before Lily had the chance, already dressed for the day and giggling. They stopped in the kitchen.

“My _baking supplies_!” Hugo said, horrified. He hurried over to the sink. “You can’t soak bamboo, Lily!”

Aster stopped in front of Lily, her eyes on the cake. She smiled.

“A heart! ‘Happy engagement, sorry, love you both.’ Oh, we love you too, Lily. And you know you don’t need to feel pressured just because we’re getting married. Everybody’s different.”

“See? Told you she’d know what it said,” Lily told her boyfriend. He put up two fingers in response. Lily levitated the cake to the table and wrapped her arms around Aster. With her face still pressed into her best friend’s nice-smelling shoulder, she snapped:

“Don’t you put your finger in that, Caden Rowle!”

Hugo was snickering. She must’ve caught him in the act.

“I’m really sorry,” Lily said. It was easier to apologize now; the words hardly stuck. “I’m over it—whatever I was under. And I’m your girl for the rest of our visit. We can plan and I’ll help bully your way up in the queues for caterers and venues. I did the best job at that for James’s and Albus’s weddings. You have free run of my services and I’m going to be the best maid of honor you’ve ever seen. ‘Cause you deserve it.”

“Goodness,” Aster said. She leaned back and held Lily’s face in her hands, her lips stretched in a wide smile. “Is Caden drugging you? Draught of Emotional Sensitivity?”

“Oi!” Lily complained.

“You must be drugging him, too. Draught of Recklessness. I’ve never seen him play drinking games as well as he did last night. You missed it.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

“Don’t worry. I took a long wizard photo on the pocket phone for you.”

“A video,” Hugo correctly gently.

“I took a video for you.”

“Oh no,” Caden groaned.

“Oh _yes_ ,” Lily snickered.

* * *

 

She was lying on her mum and dad’s sofa, her shirt pulled up to her bra, a paintbrush tickling the sore skin over her newly tattooed burn. Evra had asked to see her new ‘body art’, and upon seeing the newest additions, declared: ‘You should get a honeybee right here on this flower.’ Lily was allowing her to paint on her suggestions and Evra was taking the task _very_ seriously. She’d redone the honeybee four times now.

“No, no,” Evra complained, frustrated. She anxiously rubbed the honeybee’s wings out again with a damp cloth. “One more time…his wings were too lopsided…”

“It looked _fine_ ,” Finnigan told her with an eye roll. He and Rory were taking turns climbing the curtains; he was currently sitting at Lily’s feet awaiting his turn. Lily was the momentary babysitter so she gave them permission. That permission turned out to be a mistake when Rory slipped near the top and fell down onto the wooden floors with a sickening _smack_. The wind was knocked from her, so it took her a couple seconds to begin screaming, but when she _did,_ it was with legendary volume. Lily winced and covered her ears.

“Merlin’s saggy— Rory, come here, it’s all right!!” Lily exclaimed.

Rory was too hysterical to hear a word. “I-I-I WANT N-N-NORA!”

“Nora’s not here, so I’ll have to do.”

“J-J-JAMES!!”

“He’s not here either! They’ll be right back! Where did you get hurt?”

“All done!” Evra said. She scampered off the sofa and ran over to her adoptive sister. She patted her blonde hair. “It’s okay…shh…it’s okay…” Rory clung tearfully to the older girl.

“Oh, fuck,” Lily whispered. She realized Rory _was_ holding her leg in a strange position. “Shit. Okay. Just take deep breaths ‘til Scorpius gets here…where the hell is he?!”

James, Nora, and Lily’s parents had taken a quick trip to Diagon Alley to return one of Delilah’s defective toys and let her choose another one. Scorpius was due at the house at any moment. Albus and Caden were allegedly at the Ministry, supposedly updating each other on all the poaching business within each country’s Auror department, but Lily had a feeling they were really getting drinks somewhere. They got along fairly well (and even better when Lily wasn’t around). It had been, in James’s insulting words, a ‘trust fall’—him leaving her with the kids. She had effectively let him slam into the ground.

Lily often mended the broken bones of her dragons, but she’d never done the spell on any human besides herself. She was reluctant to use it on Rory, who seemed particularly fragile. She walked over and kneeled beside her, murmured ‘ _ferula’_ to safely bind her broken leg, and then sat with the tearful girl until Scorpius arrived, nearly five minutes later.

“Oh no!! Rory!” he cried, horrified. Rory reached for him at once, snot dripping down into her mouth. Ugh. Scorpius sat beside their new niece and cleaned her face. He mended her bone in a second, easily and perfectly. Rory threw herself into his arms immediately. “Oh, poor Rory! What happened?!”

“I-I-I fell!”

“They were being naughty,” Evra sang beneath her breath. She pointed at the curtains. “Climbing the curtains when Ginny says ‘no, no’.”

“L-Lulu said _yes_!” Rory tattled. Lily scoffed.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to fall, did I?!” she exclaimed.

Scorpius didn’t blame Lily, though. He smiled over Rory’s head.

“Hi, Lily. I missed you,” he said. “How was your trip home? Your dad said you took a muggle plane?”

“It wasn’t too bad. I caught up on loads of sleep,” she admitted. “How have things with you and Al been?”

Lily listened as Scorpius ranted on and on about Albus’s ‘awful job’. His own job, it seemed, was going better than ever; he had spent the entire time Lily was gone working on various experiments to provide other child-bearing options for people.

“We’ve got our match system up and running now, you know,” he told her proudly. “Everybody’s allowed to get a lime pox test whenever they want. Couples, where one or both is positive, will soon have other options! Surrogacy, egg donation, sperm donation—so far in my studies, my methods are working really, really well, and they’re relatively painless and _much_ less invasive than the Muggle ways…sorry, am I rambling? I’m rambling. I’m just really…proud, I guess.”

Scorpius looked sheepish come the end of his speech. Lily plopped back down on the sofa; Scorpius followed, Rory still clinging to him.

“You should be proud, that’s really cool,” Lily smiled. “It’s really exciting! Finding something you’ve been looking for. Scorpius, I found a _tiny dragon_. I’m calling it a Pygmy Dragon.”

His jaw dropped. “What?!” he said excitedly. “Really?! I thought that was just an idea you made up?! I didn’t know they actually existed!”

“Neither did I!” said Lily gleefully. “Not until one showed up at my sanctuary! Oh, I can’t _wait_ to go back and study it…”

Scorpius opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it again…Lily was too impatient to take it.

“What?” she asked.

“I want to share something with you, but I need you to keep it a secret,” Scorpius began. There was excitement lurking beneath his words.

“Okay…” Lily trailed off, her brow furrowing. “Is this about the baby thing? You’ve got the ‘baby thing’ face on. You and Albus wear that same exact look.”

His smile broke free. “We’ve got it all sorted. I’ve been checked out, Nora’s been checked out, I feel confident in the procedures I’ve created. We’ve done two surrogacy counseling classes. We’re going for it, Lily. Lily, Albus and I are going to be parents.”

He was the sort of happy that was seconds away from tears. Lily couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re going to be an _amazing_ dad. So when do you want my E-G-G?”

Scorpius looked a bit taken aback. “What?”

Lily looked at him oddly. “My E-G-G. You know, we talked all about this before I left. Did you change your mind?”

“No! Not at all! NO! It’s just…well, we hadn’t heard anything from you in a while, so we all just assumed that _you’d_ changed your mind. We’ve been trying to find another donor but Albus has been really, really picky…so you’re saying you _would_ do it?”

Lily laughed. “Scorpius, yes. I meant it before and I mean it now. I will. I’ve just been so busy and I figured that you’d tell me when it was time for my part of it all.” She thought about her hectic schedule; she had no idea when she’d make it back to England. “What’s your procedure like? How long will it take? Could we do it before I go back to New Zealand? I have no idea when I’ll make it back home, is all.”

“I…I think so! How long are you staying?”

“Three weeks.”

“We’d need to get things started tomorrow but we _should_ have time! Only I have to warn you, Lily…it’s not going to be _painful_ , but it will be a bit inconvenient.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well, you’ve got to take a specific potion five times a day for seven days. It enables multiple eggs to mature at once instead of just one. Then, at the end of that week, we’ll induce ovulation with another potion,, and we’ll use a spell to remove two or three eggs. We’ll pick the best one, fertilize it, then we use another spell to put it in Nora, and from there everything’s pretty standard…”

Lily heard the words he hadn’t said. “And what are the side effects of the potion like?”

Scorpius sucked in a nervous breath. “Well, nothing _too_ crazy…mood swings, nausea, sometimes a low-grade fever, oh and you can’thavesexwithoutabarrierpotionforamonth.”

Lily stared. “Scorpius, nobody can hear you when you talk that quickly.”

“Er…well, in all our studies, the potion that we’re using to increase fertility doesn’t work itself out of your system until around a month or so. So you absolutely _have_ to use barrier methods as protection—potions won’t cut it.”

Lily groaned. “Seriously? Well, why not? Potions won’t work at all?”

“No. And if you have sex without protection during that month, you’ll probably end up with your own baby, so maybe don’t do it.”

“That’s a very serious side-effect, Scorpius! A baby is a seventeen-year-long side effect!! The entire point of this is to give _you and Albus_ a baby, not get one of my own!”

“You won’t!” Scorpius said quickly. He glanced down at Rory to make sure she wasn’t listening. He leaned closer to Lily. “Just make sure before you and Caden…you know…that he…you know. For four weeks afterwards. Then it’ll all be fine! Just four weeks, then everything will be back to normal. What do you think?”

“I think I’d rather you do it the Muggle way and stick a needle up my—”

“Shhhhhh!! Lady parts!!”

Lily sighed.

“And no, I do _not_ believe the Muggle drugs they use for this are safe. I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking you to take them. Plus the muggle procedure itself can sometimes cause infertility. I just can’t ask that of you. I know my method is safe. And you’re giving us a gift, a really selfless one at that, so I have to make sure that you’re taken care of.”

It was probably the first time anybody had used _selfless_ to describe her. It gave her an odd tingly feeling. She decided she liked it.

“If you say it’s safe, that’s good enough for me,” she decided.

“And you’re _sure_ that you—”

Lily grabbed a sofa cushion and covered her face with it. “YES, SCORPIUS, I’M SURE. IT’S OKAY. I PROMISE. I LOVE YOU AND ALBUS. THIS CAN COUNT AS YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR THE NEXT TWO DECADES.”

“For the rest of our _lives_ , Lily. This means so much to us. I can’t express how much.”

He set Rory beside him, reached over, and wrapped his arms around Lily. She let the cushion fall to the floor as she hugged him back. She caught herself smiling as he leaned back.

“Is it okay to tell Albus? I really want to go find him and tell him,” he asked.

Lily laughed. “Yeah, of course. Go tell my brother that you’ve finally found the superior genes he’s been looking for.”

After Scorpius ran off to find Albus, positively brimming with excitement, Lily leaned back against the sofa. She smiled at Rory.

“It actually feels nice, you know,” she told the little girl. “Doing something good for somebody. I wish I’d tried it sooner.”

She let her eyes shut and yawned. It was so quiet. So strangely quiet…

Lily sat straight up with a gasp. She looked frantically around the living room. “Oh, fuck. Where are the rest of the kids?!”

* * *

 

She’d only just extracted Henry from the chimney when she heard the door open. Lily quickly cast a cleaning charm on Henry and lifted him up. She peered seriously into his brown eyes.

“Henry,” she said. “Can you keep a secret? Like a big boy?”

Henry smiled. Lily patted his head.

“We’re back!! How did it go?” Nora called. Lily plopped down on the sofa and sat Henry in her lap. She smiled innocently as Nora walked into the room.

“Oh, wonderful. Peachy! They were little angels!”

Nora walked over and sat beside them. She smoothed Henry’s curls back.

“Henry, love, you look so happy! Did you have fun?”

Henry collapsed into mischievous giggles. Lily knew Finnigan could keep a secret, but she wasn’t sure about Henry yet.

“Yes!!”

“What did you do? Did you play with Lulu?”

“I play chim-y!”

“Chimney?” Nora repeated, puzzled. “Oh, did you two play Father Christmas? A bit out of season, but how fun!!”

“Yeah, it was great. Here, come see what the others are doing, so nicely and responsibly…”

Lily led Nora out into the garden, where Finnigan, Evra, and Rory were playing in the treehouse. Finnigan was remarkably energetic as he soared on the swings, considering Lily had found him hanging from the rod in Harry and Ginny’s wardrobe trying to beat ‘his record’. He’d been hanging on for nearly four minutes straight. Thankfully, Evra had just been outside in the garden, stalking the bees like Caden stalked birds.

Nora walked over to greet her kids, and as soon she was occupied, Lily escaped back into the house. She sat Henry on the counter, opened a tin with Hugo’s name on the top, and shoved a massive doughnut the size of Henry’s head into his mouth.

“Good job, kid,” she praised. She kissed his forehead loudly and then walked off.

“WUWU! WUWU!” he yelled after her, his voice muffled into the doughnut.

“What?” Lily asked. She turned around impatiently. Henry looked uncertainly at the big drop from the counter to the floor. “Oh, shit—yeah, I should probably get you down from the counter…those little legs and all…”

Lily had just set Henry on the floor when her arse vibrated. She jumped, alarmed. It took her a second to remember her pocket phone. Right. She withdrew it from her pocket. Henry booked it towards the living room.

“HEY!” she yelled after her nephew. “WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING? GO BACK OUTSIDE WITH YOUR MUM; YOU’RE _NOT_ PLAYING ON THE ROOF AGAIN!” She glanced at the phone screen. She smiled. She swiped and answered the call. “Hello there.”

“Why the hell did your brother-in-law just run into Albus’s office to say that you’re giving them your eggs?” Caden greeted.

“Oh, right. Remember when we talked about Nora surrogating for them? Well, I said they could have one or two of my eggs. To make the baby with, you know. One-half of the ingredients.”

“And _when_ were you going to tell me about this?”

Lily shrugged. “Now, I guess. I wasn’t really thinking much about it right before we left for New Zealand, ‘cause I was too worried about leaving you, and I don’t have to tell you how hectic things have been since we got there. Just slipped my mind is all.”

“It slipped your mind that you’re going to have an actual baby?” he demanded.

“I’m not having anything! I’m not pushing anything out of my vagina!”

“But it’ll have _your_ DNA!”

Lily was lost. She couldn’t tell if he was as stressed out by this as he sounded or if he was just tired. “Hang on. I’m switching to the mirror thing.” She pulled the phone back and tapped hard at the icon that would show her Caden’s face. A few moments later, his stressed-out expression greeted her. He looked to be walking from the Ministry. “Hi.”

“Hi. It’ll be genetically yours, Lily,” he pressed.

Lily studied his furrowed brow. “Why’s this matter so much to you? It’s not like it’ll be my child in any real way. It’s not like you’ve got to be a daddy. I’m just letting them take one or two eggs and then they’ll get their little baby and the baby will grow up to be a legend.”

“I don’t know. I guess I just…I don’t know.”

It wasn’t often that he couldn’t find the words. Lily frowned. “Are you really upset about this? I didn’t think you would be. It never even occurred to me that you’d care.”

“No, I’m not _upset_. It’s a nice thing to do, anyway.”

“It’s selfless,” Lily said happily, remembering Scorpius’s word. “Me. Selfless!” Her smug smile gradually fell as she took in his expression. “I think you _are_ upset! Why are you lying to me?!”

“I’m really not! It’s just…strange. Because I never imagined that you’d have a child or that I’d meet it. At least not like this, not like…your nephew or niece that’s really half you. It’s just sort of weird for me. Because my girlfriend’s the mum, so that makes me feel like…I don’t know.”

“I’m _not_ the mum,” Lily said firmly. “This is _not_ my kid. I won’t be raising it, okay? C’mon, come home. We’ll talk about it. A proper talk. We’ll talk about our feelings and then we can shag.”

_Finally,_ he smiled. Lily felt like she could breathe easier once he had. “Yeah, all right,” he agreed.

Lily Flooed the Auror department immediately afterwards. She was directed to Albus’s office. Scorpius jumped guiltily as Lily’s face came to life in the fireplace; he and Albus were sitting together in Albus’s office chair.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Scorpius greeted in a rush. “I forgot Caden was there!!”

“It’s fine. Just turns out this is something we have to ‘talk’ about,” Lily said. She closed the words in finger-quotes. “I never imagined he’d care what I did or didn’t do with my alleged ‘eggs’. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”

Scorpius was horrified. He sounded like he was choking. “You haven’t talked with him about this yet?!”

“No…like I said, why would I? It’s not like they’re his eggs.”

“No, but you’re his girlfriend, right?” Scorpius reminded her.

Albus shook his head. “Lily, how would you feel if there was a girl out there carrying Caden’s baby?”

Her immediate visceral reaction was not a good one. Jealousy of the utmost form overtook her mind. Her skin crawled at the idea of somebody else mixing their genes with Caden, _her_ Caden. The idea of somebody having something so intimate of his—his actual DNA. She couldn’t say she’d ever felt possessive over sperm before, but there was always a first time for everything.

Albus continued. “It’s not exactly the same—because Scorpius and I never had any possibility of having a biological child together—but I don’t think I’d be okay with what we’re doing if we weren’t raising the baby as ours. I would _not_ be okay with him donating his sperm to other people for them to have babies that wouldn’t be ours. I wouldn’t be okay with somebody out there having a part of Scorpius forever. No way. His babies are my babies. Mine are his. That’s just how I feel. And maybe that’s how Caden feels, too. I don’t want to talk you out of it…but I think you need to think on it better than you have so far. Talk about it and then give us a final decision. I don't want anybody to regret anything, okay?”

“Okay,” Lily admitted. Albus had clearly anticipated an argument; he lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “This is definitely a ‘talk-about-it’ thing. You’ve convinced me. You Slytherins are good at that.”

“Yeah. And make sure you actually _do_ talk about it, Lily. Because I don’t want us to get our hopes up only to have you back out at the last moment,” Albus said. He sounded exceptionally vulnerable. Lily couldn’t find it in herself to tease him; she knew this was too important to him, too dear to his heart.

“I promise I won’t do that, Al.”

* * *

 

“The problem is,” Lily greeted Caden, “I’m not maternal.”

He stopped in the doorway, initially taken aback. His eyebrows lifted; a smirk followed. He let his shopping bags fall to the carpet of Lily’s room in Albus and Scorpius’s flat as his eyes scanned down her naked body.

“This is a nice welcome,” he said. “Are you trying to distract me from conversation? It might work.”

Lily propped herself up on her elbows. She watched him peel his outer layers off first. She ignored his question and began her rehearsed speech at once. “See, when I think about these little things that are supposedly inside of me, I don’t think of them as _babies_ or _kids_. I can’t even see them. And most of them will either be bled out or eventually get so old that they just…well, I’m actually not clear on what happens after that point; I can’t imagine being old…but _my point is:_ I wasn’t trying to keep you in the dark about this. It just didn’t ever feel like a big deal to me. Like, if someone asks you to give some blood, you say yes, right? Because you’ve got plenty and you won’t really notice that a tiny bit is gone. But if you donate blood, even though it was really no big deal at all to you, it could mean life for somebody else…why are you smirking? Don’t you laugh at my comparison! I spent a long time coming up with that! I’m _trying_ to tell you how I feel more often since you seem to want me to do that, so I’ll thank you _not_ to embarrass me!”

“I’m not smirking at that,” he told her. He sat on the edge of the bed to remove his shoes. Once he had, he stretched out beside her. He kissed over her newly burnt and tattooed hip bone. “Nice bumblebees.”

Lily had forgotten about Evra’s art. She looked down at them. “Oh, yeah. Evra did them. I actually quite like it. I think I might get Lon to add this one on.” She pointed at the cutest honey bee.

“I like it. You should,” he said. He kissed her skin again in a way so tender it made Lily’s cheeks warm. Sometimes his sweetness felt more explicit to her than bouts of rough sex. “Your burns look loads better today. Do they hurt less?”

“A bit,” she lied. She waited until he’d reluctantly pulled his lips from her skin. “I think I get why you’re upset.”

“I’m _not_ upset,” he reiterated. He dropped his head on the pillow beside hers. Lily pushed her hands up his shirt and worked it over his head. She curled up to his chest afterwards. She inhaled the smell of his soap and gripped him a bit possessively. Yeah. She would _not_ be okay with some other girl having his baby.

“The thought of another woman having your baby makes me want to kick that woman. And honestly, feeling like you’d kick a pregnant woman is not a great feeling.”

“No, I’d imagine not,” Caden said dryly. “Not even a hex? You’d move straight in for a kick?”

“Well, a hex might hurt the baby, but a kick would just hurt her,” Lily explained. There was a pause. “I’ve thought it through.”

“So you have,” he replied, amused. He kissed her lips briefly. She moved straight into the next point she’d rehearsed.

“I’m going to do what I think is best no matter what. That’s just the way I am. I’m not asking for permission. But…I care about you, and we’ve sort of got a life together now, so…I’d really like you to be okay with it.”

“I _want_ to be okay with it. Because it’s a wonderful thing and your brothers deserve kindness.”

“But…?” Lily pressed.

“But it’s a bit difficult for me. The idea of you sharing something so personal with somebody else. And I don’t mean physically, because you’re right, eggs are just eggs just like sperm is just sperm, but if you and Scorpius create a child together, that’s…” he trailed off uneasily. “That’s a bond that you’ll share with him and nobody else. More to the point…a bond that I’ll never understand because I’ll never experience it with you and that feels…being on the outside of that feels…”

It was so difficult for Lily not to interrupt him. She was not accustomed to having to wait for him to put his emotions perfectly and instantly into words. But she knew she needed to let him work through it.

“I guess it makes me jealous and a bit sad. Because that’s supposed to be something so intimate. And the idea of you two, cuddled up with a newborn, chatting about whose nose it got or whose eyes…it makes me feel sick. And the idea that I’ll have to see the child all the time…knowing it’s something that we’ll never share…I don’t know, Lily. I really don’t.”

“Are you telling me that you want kids now?” Lily blurted, an edge of trepidation to her words. “‘Cause I’ve told you before: I’m so far from making my mind up about all that. It’s a miracle that I’ve even found myself slightly undecided on the issue. If I didn’t have such fucking adorable nephews and nieces, I’d definitely still be stuck at ‘hell no’.”

“I’m not saying that,” he corrected patiently. “I’m just saying that I don’t like the idea of you having kids with anybody else.”

It made sense to Lily because they’d sort of already had this conversation. “Like marriage: ‘me or nobody’.”

“Yeah,” he realized. “I guess that’s how I feel about this, too. Me or nobody.”

“I know I’ve said it before, but Caden, he won’t be having a baby _with_ me. It’s not like I’m shagging him and going through nine months of pregnancy. I’m going to take a potion, they’re going to extract something from me, we’ll go back to our life in New Zealand, Nora will have the baby, and then we’ll come back and it’ll be Albus and Scorpius’s and they’ll change all the nappies and feed it and sing to it. I’m not sharing anything with Scorpius, not really. I won’t have any more say in that baby’s life than I’ve got in James’s kids’ lives. And, you know, my genes came from my mum and dad, and Albus’s also came from my mum and dad, so in a way, the baby is just a slightly jumbled Potter-Malfoy. Albus and I share the same ingredients; they’re just rearranged in a different way. So I think it’s fair to think of it as an Albus and Scorpius combination, an Albus and Scorpius bond. I mean, Finnigan is a lot like me, even if he’s not directly from me. All families resemble each other. I don’t think it’d feel as weird as you think it will. I think the baby will probably have so many traits from both Scorpius and Albus that it’ll be easy to see it as theirs in every way.”

Caden laughed. “Finnigan _is_ so much like you.”

Lily was feeling very emotionally worn out from all the honest conversation. She was ready for the shagging bit. Her hands rested on the waistband of his trousers, ready to undo the button at a moment’s notion. “So? Have we talked it out? Can we be done? I think I did a good job.”

Her heart jumped in pleased expectation as he leaned over her, forcing her onto her back. He kissed her firmly, his hands slipping into her hair. She took that as a yes—she had done a good job.  

“As long as it won’t come between us—as long as you’re still mine and we’re still us—I’m okay with it.”

Lily rolled them over, so Caden was on his back. She took her rightful spot atop him and gripped his face tightly in her hands. She mocked his words from earlier.

“You’re the most insecure egomaniac I’ve ever known,” she muttered. 

“Oh, fuck you,” he grinned, his hands landing to grip tightly at her hips. The pain felt nice. She leaned in and kissed him. She mumbled her next words against his lips.

“Incidentally, you are. Going to fuck me, I mean.”

“Which makes me the luckiest person alive right now,” he murmured. He ran his hands up her back and kissed her again. Lily felt herself melt a bit, but she’d never admit it. And luckily, she didn’t have to; he could read it perfectly on the lines of her body. “I love you,” he told her.

Lily smiled into her responding kiss. “I love you _more_ ,” she admitted.

“Always a competition with you, isn’t it?”

“You love it.”

“I do.”

She didn’t necessarily know what the future would bring, and it was all getting rather uncertain and scary, what with her best friend getting married and her second brother embarking on a path towards parenthood. But she did know her future would include _this_ , and that was comforting enough to get her through the insecurities. Him or nobody, and at times like this, she was strongly leaning towards him.


	11. II. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus and Scorpius look to the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, life has been busy! Thanks to the Tumblr anon who gave me the idea about names that's mentioned in this chapter (and letting me use it!) ;)

“All right,” Young said. He waved his wand; the blackboard he’d summoned disappeared. “The Wales assignment is going to Treblinder, Bruce, and Potter.”

Albus felt his heart lurch. He snapped his eyes up from his parchment and stared at Young in disbelief. Young didn’t seem to notice Albus’s shock.

“Come directly to my office before you leave today for further instruction.”

Albus quickly jumped up from his desk and hurried out, following after his boss. His heart was doing that weird thing that always made him feel lightheaded, the double-beats and skipping-beats thing that Scorpius called palpitations. He had no time to figure out a polite way to turn down his boss. He darted into the lift after Young and got straight to the point.

“Young, I can’t,” he said. He ignored Young’s lifted brows. “Go to Wales, I mean—I can’t. I can’t go. The assignment’s for almost a year, right? I can’t.”

Young laughed. It made Albus clench his jaw in annoyance.

“Nonsense,” Young dismissed. “You’ve done the best work in the entire department on this poaching situation. I can’t think of anybody else I’d rather place in Wales to deal with it head on.”

“No, I’m not saying I can’t go because of a confidence issue, I truly cannot go to Wales. And my work is only the best because I’ve got connections,” Albus muttered, annoyed. He didn’t like getting praised for things that weren’t even genuinely because of him. Getting appreciated because of his sister was worse than never being appreciated at all.

The lift doors opened on the fifth floor, interrupting whatever rebuttal Young had prepared himself to give. Albus felt relief flood him at the familiar face. He walked forward and seized his elder brother’s arm, pulling him over into their conversation.

“James, tell Young that I can’t go to Wales for a year.”

James gaped at Young. “A _year_?! _Wales_?!” He threw his arm around Albus’s shoulders protectively. “What are you putting my brother in exile for?! Whatever he did, I’m sure we can work it out with our aunt! _Really_ , Young—this seems excessive!”

“It’s not a _punishment_ , James, it’s a reward!” Young beamed. “It’s a promotion of sorts, really, if you consider the pay raise!”

“Oh! A _promotion_!” James exclaimed. He looked down at Albus. He slapped his shoulder so hard that Albus winced and stumbled forward. “Nice job, Al!”

“I am _not_ moving to Wales for a year, James,” Albus hissed at him. “I’m having a baby, or did you somehow forget that?” He looked back at Young. “Thanks but no thanks. Give the spot to Pierce. I’m having a baby and I’m _not_ going away for a year.”

The lift doors opened. Albus didn’t even glance at what floor he was on; he got off, leaving Young behind wearing a baffled expression. His brother squeezed through the doors right as they were shutting. Albus paused and waited for him.

“You’ve got to stop telling people you’re having a baby, mate,” James said. “Everybody _always_ glances down at your stomach. It’s embarrassing to watch…”

“Well, what else am I supposed to say?!” Albus demanded. He wanted to feel irritated, but already his annoyance was fading as he thought about his future child. He only had to picture the tiny little hands of newborns before he was beaming. “I am having a baby. Well, if an embryo stuck, that is. Merlin, I hope it did.”

“Technically my wife is _having_ the baby,” James reminded him. “Physically speaking. Speaking of, have you heard from Scorpius yet? What time should we be at St. Mungo’s? Did you invite Lily? I love her, and what she’s done for you is really brave and strong and giving, but she’s been a _nightmare_ since she started those potions, I honestly don’t know how Caden hasn’t leapt from a window or set himself on fire or…” James trailed off abruptly. “Mum!!”

Albus had been watching the floor as they walked, but at his brother’s sudden exclamation, he looked up. Their mum was giving them a stern look, but Albus could tell she was glad to have stumbled upon them; the affection in her eyes made him smile.

“For the last time, James, leave your sister alone,” their mum scolded, by way of greeting. “She’s got an insane amount of hormones in her body right now. And _you_ —” their mum pointed accusingly at Albus. He sarcastically looked behind himself. “I don’t want to hear you talking badly about your little sister when she’s enduring this for your sake, Albus!”

Albus glowered. “I didn’t say a word, Mum! James did! I didn’t say anything!”

“He didn’t, Mum,” James backed him up. “But…she _did_ kick a hole in the wall yesterday. I never knew she was that strong…”

“I’ve never seen somebody get so angry over a dropped ice cream, either,” Albus hissed to James. James snickered.

“Well, I’m glad you two are bonding at her expense while she endures nausea and dizziness and mood swings,” their mum snapped. She crossed her arms. “Honestly, who raised you two?!”

Albus decided backtracking would be a good thing to do. “Er, we’re not teasing her, Mum. Really. We’re just Potters. We banter! Sometimes at each other’s expense. It’s what we do. But it’s not—”

“—It’s not teasing,” James completed, nodding along in agreement. “Nope. It’s Potter banter.”

“It sounds like teasing.”

“Potter banter.”

“Is this like when you were little and you would pour sugar into all your meals behind our backs and insist that you hadn’t added sugar, you’d added ‘bravery’? Because it was still sugar, Jamie, and it still made you vomit all over my new carpets.”

“And here, exhibit A: Potter banter,” Albus quipped.

His mum arched an eyebrow. Albus arched one back. James, who had never learned to arch just one, ended up doing something really weird with his face as he tried—and failed—to keep one eyebrow all the way down. Their mum sighed.

“Just be nice to her…I was the same way when I was pregnant with you, James. I burst into tears over baby birds once…the mummy bird went to so much trouble to bring the babies a meal every single day and hardly ate herself…” she trailed off, a faraway look in her eye. Albus pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. James didn’t even try; he burst into laughter, laughter their mum echoed at once. She walked over and smacked his shoulder.

“Stop laughing at your mother!”

“I’m getting you some little baby birds for your birthday, Mum!” James grinned.

“Oh, shove off!”

“Can you tell your kid to do that?! I don’t think so. Albus, what do you think?” asked James.

“Nah, Mum. It’s not right,” Albus agreed. “Would you tell Evra that, James?”

“I’d eat my foot before I told Evra that. Would you tell Potter-Malfoy Baby that, Albus?”

“I would set myself on fire before I told Potter-Malfoy Baby that.”

“Oh, look at you two: the paragons of fatherhood,” their mum snorted. She rolled her eyes affectionately. James pulled her into a hug a moment later, laughing into her hair as he did. She reached for Albus next; he smiled into her shoulder. She held Albus’s arms and looked up at him once they pulled back. “So? What time tonight?”

Albus sighed. “Everybody’s asking _me_ when it’s _Scorpius_ who decides on the time.”

“Because we know you’ll find out first. Are you excited?”

“What sort of question is that, Mum?!” James demanded. “Of course he’s excited! Right, Al? Excited?”

Albus’s smile was so broad it made his cheeks ache. “Yeah. I’m excited, Mum.”

She smiled. “How about you, Jamie? Excited?”

“I am proud of my wife,” he responded at once. There was a definite tenor of pride in his words; he stood a little straighter. Nobody could deny his genuineness.

“As you should be,” Albus admitted. He heard the warmth in his own tone but didn’t try to defend it. There weren’t many people in the world as good as Nora Thomas (or Potter, technically.) “Mum?”

“Bursting with excitement for Triple Grandkid,” she responded at once.

“Don’t call my future child that,” Albus complained.

“Why not? Nora and Jamie’s by pregnancy, yours by nurture, Lily’s by nature…I’m proud of my little Triple Grandbaby. You lot put more teamwork into this than you put into anything else during your entire childhoods—maybe your entire lives. And _nobody_ got their faces hexed in the process.” She set a hand over her heart and smiled. “It’s just so nice to watch your children mature and grow.”

“It’s still a weird nickname. Pick a new one,” Albus persisted.

“Well, give me some names to work with and I’ll use those!”

“We don’t even know for certain if she’s pregnant yet!”

“She’s definitely pregnant! She’s been feeling queasy all week!” his mum reassured him.

“It could all be in her head! Her body might not take to Scorpius’s weird, magical implantation thing—he said so himself! Don’t get my hopes up even more because I’ll be really upset if it doesn’t work!” Albus complained.

“It’s not in her head,” James reassured Albus. “Trust me. I know her. She’s definitely got early pregnancy symptoms going on. But then again, so has Lily, and she’s not pregnant, so I guess it could be the potions and stuff Scorpius gave them…”

Albus’s heart plummeted painfully. “See, Mum?” he said weakly, but he didn’t want to be right. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“We’ll know for sure tonight. And if it’s positive, that’s a _great_ birthday present for Scorpius, and a great early going-away gift for Lily.”

Albus felt his heart sink down lower. “And if it’s negative, Scorpius’s birthday tomorrow will be _ruined_.”

“And if it’s _positive_ ,” James countered, “it’ll be the best birthday he’s ever had! Trust me, I’ve gotten that news four times—five if you count the day we were allowed to legally adopt Rory—and nothing is more amazing.”

Albus knew they were trying to cheer him up, but he was sinking down into anxiety quickly. His heart was beating so rapidly and irregularly that he felt nauseated and lightheaded. He leaned into his mum and hardly felt her hand press over his heart.

“You need to relax; your heart’s pounding out the rhythm to an old Weird Sisters’ song,” she said. “C’mon, are you done for the day? I am. We can go to St. Mungo’s and see how Scorpius’s day is coming along.”

“I don’t think I’m done. Mum, he’s trying to send me to Wales for a _year_ ,” Albus admitted weakly.

“What?! What the hell?! Absolutely not! You can’t go to Wales for a year! You’re having a baby!”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Albus agreed. He remembered his wariness (it was difficult to forget now with his heart acting up). “Maybe. I’m maybe having a baby.”

“It’s a _promotion_ , though!” James sang. “Because Al’s done such a great job on the poaching stuff!”

Ginny narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“No, that’s how they trapped your dad! They slap ‘promotion’ on everything unpleasant and then make you feel like you’re the only person who could _possibly_ do what they need you to do and once they act pathetic enough—and like they need you enough—you’ll give in and Scorpius will be stuck dealing with Triple Grandbaby’s first cold all by himself while you’re in Scotland dealing with a hungry werewolf!”

“Uh…” James said. “They really were promotions for Dad. He ended up being the Ultimate Boss.”

“Well, yes, but when he was just starting out it was a load of rubbish! And your first cold was terrifying, Jamie. Albus, do you _want_ to be the Head of Magical Law Enforcement one day?” demanded his mum.

Albus didn’t feel like he knew a lot about anything, and most of the time, he absolutely felt like he was just floating along. But he knew the answer to that. He only had to think about all the hours his dad had worked when he was growing up.

“No. I do not.”

“Then the promotions are pointless! Listen, I’ve been chatting with my arch nemesis—”

“Which one?” James interrupted. 

“Skeeter,” Ginny clarified.

“Ah! Continue.”

“Anyway, I was chatting with Skeeter—well, I was trapped in a malfunctioning lift with her, and she was really chatting _at_ me, but I was unfortunately not deaf, so— and she was saying that  _she heard_ that the new flying instructor at Hogwarts was already looking into retirement. Now, I haven’t had a chance to ask your dad or McGonagall about it, but Al, you should do that! There’s always a place in the _Prophet_ for you, too—”

Albus interrupted her, annoyed. She’d been trying to get him to work in her office for ages. “Mum, I can’t write articles. It’s a miracle I can write reports, and even those are awful.”

“And, as I’ve told you, that doesn’t matter. You can go to matches and take messy, insane notes and I can turn them into great articles. I’m a wonderful Sports Editor, or didn’t you know that?”

Albus was forcibly reminded, once again, how much their sister was like their mum. Wasn’t always a bad thing, but he did have to wonder if his mum was ever as…unrefined as his sister was in her younger years. He glanced at James and found James looking at their mum with an amused expression; as they locked eyes quickly, he knew they were thinking the same thing.

“I dunno, Al,” James finally said, before he and Albus burst into laughter. “That’s a better job for raising Potter-Malfoy Baby. You’d be home more…you wouldn’t have to carry that vial around in case you get stabbed or something and start bleeding to death…”

Albus was frustrated. It didn’t feel like that much of an improvement, in his opinion, if he went straight from his dad’s job to his mum’s. He needed something uniquely _his_ , but he had yet to find anything he was particularly good at, and it was a constant sore spot for his ego.

“Thanks for the suggestions, Mum,” he finally managed, only by the grace of Scorpius’s polite and continued influence on him. He sighed heavily. He wasn’t feeling well at all now, thanks to his heart. He wanted to go home and take the special potion Scorpius prescribed him ages ago. “I guess I should go back to work and deal with Young.”

“You don’t look so good,” his mum said softly. She never missed a thing. Albus leaned into her touch as she cupped his cheek; he still caught himself acting clingy when he didn’t feel well, despite how much he tried to stop it. He wanted to be mature and shoulder his pain bravely and silently—like his dad always did—but he was clearly too much of a baby. “I’ll go talk with Young. Go home and get some rest.”

“Bad idea,” James said at once. “You can’t hex his boss, Mum, we’ve talked about this, Dad has talked to you about this, Albus has talked to you about this…”

“I’m not going to hex him…today, anyway,” their mum reassured them. “I’m just going to tell him that Albus isn’t feeling well and that there’s no chance he’s sending _my son_ away for a year. That’s all.”

She looked innocent enough, and anyway, Albus was feeling too poorly to argue. He wondered if he’d gotten a cut on his body—sometimes when he bled out a lot before realizing it he felt like this—but he glanced down at himself and saw no evidence of injury. Going home for the day sounded better than he could express. His bed, his potions, lunch…he could relax until it was time to go to St. Mungo’s…

“Okay,” he agreed. “Thanks, Mum.”

“No, thank _you,_ ” she said happily. “I’ve wanted to talk to Young for ages.”

Albus didn’t like the wicked glint that passed over her dark eyes. He glanced at James. James nodded.

“I’ll go with you, Mum,” James said.

“Don’t you have other work to be doing?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing is as important as spending time with my mummy,” he shot back sweetly.

“Sweet. A boldfaced lie, but very sweet. C’mon. Bye, Al. I’ll be by at lunch to check in on you. Try to find out the time before then, okay? We’ll need to make plans for the kids.”

Albus nodded. He set off down the corridor. He heard his brother gasp a moment later.

“…Wait a second…Nora said she was feeling well enough to go into work today…which means…shouldn’t you have my children right now, Mum?!”

Albus paused and glanced around, in case he needed to help search the Ministry for his nieces and nephews, but Ginny looked annoyed. It was the Dean and Seamus look.

“No. They were snatched from me. Something about ‘pottery class.’ I don’t appreciate them scheduling the kids for pottery class on _my time_ , but that’s a duel for another time…Seamus is the only snake native to Ireland…”

Albus decided to walk away from that conversation before it got too intense. He made a mental note to have a candid conversation with Draco about how mental his parents were before the Potter-Malfoy Baby became a reality.

* * *

 

Albus was cooking one of his newest attempts at a side-dish—goat cheese coated asparagus—when he heard the lock on the front door unlatch. He could tell it was his husband at once; the soft rhythm of his footsteps and the familiar _clunk_ of his briefcase hitting the floor were undeniable. Albus grinned and quickly set the lid atop his skillet, leaving his creation to steam a few more moments. He stepped into the entrance hall and met Scorpius halfway. He smelled of disinfectant and Pepper-Up Potion, but Albus found him incredibly desirable despite. He returned Scorpius’s hug, backed them up, and leaned him against the hall wall. His husband was smiling as Albus brought his lips to his. He ran his hands through Scorpius’s hair as he kissed him deeply, the anticipation for their evening appointment only serving to make him antsier. He was fully planning on sticking his hands into his husband’s trousers when Scorpius abruptly pulled back from their kiss. Albus met his eyes. Beneath his white eyelashes, his grey eyes were churning with concern.

“You smell like Heart Potion.”

Albus groaned. “Don’t go all overprotective on me—”

“Was your heart acting up again? Badly enough that you took your potion?”

Albus groaned louder as Scorpius’s fingers pressed at once to his neck to count his pulse. Albus rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “I really don’t want to spend our last few free hours playing Healer. Not the genuine kind, anyway…”

“Your heart seems all right now. What was going on when it started acting up? You have to tell me if exercise starts making it worse because if it does, the Muggle cardiologist says—”

“First of all, nobody is cutting any part of me open with a knife. Secondly, I’m _fine_. Come on, I don’t want to be poked and prodded. Well—not like that,” he amended again. He dropped his hands to Scorpius’s hips. He leaned in and kissed him again. “I just want a nice dinner and a nice snog; can’t a man have that?”

“Depends on the man’s health,” Scorpius persisted. But he craned his head to the side as Albus leaned in to kiss his neck, granting him access to his most sensitive spot. Albus kissed him and tried to keep a lid on his irritated rant, but he’d never been able to keep anything from his best friend.

“Young’s trying to send me away for a year. To _Wales_. To fight poachers.”

Scorpius recoiled. “What?! No! No!! There was that whole thing when we got married about being together forever; that was the whole, entire point, that we wouldn’t have to be without each other, and I for one do _not_ consider you being away in _Wales_ for a year to be us being ‘together’ and I absolutely support whatever you want to do with your career and your life and everything but I am—firmly—planting—my—foot! See! Look!” Scorpius stamped his foot a couple times on the carpet. Albus pressed his lips together to hold back his laughter. “It is _planted_! I don’t want you fighting poachers and I don’t want you in Wales and I don’t want you away from me for a year! And what if Nora _is_ pregnant?! You’ll miss our baby’s entire creation! Maybe you’ll even miss the birth!! Oh, _by God_ , Albus, I will not be a single, working dad!!”

Albus could’ve interrupted Scorpius a long time ago, but he was too busy enjoying his animated speech. Once Scorpius ended his spiel, Albus leaned in and kissed him again.

“Don’t worry. I told Young no and put my mum on it.”

Scorpius relaxed into Albus’s embrace. “Oh, good. Ginny will tell him precisely where he can shove his year-long assignment.”

“Up his arse,” Albus agreed.

“Yes. Right there. Let’s tell your dad just to be safe. Lily’s leaving soon so he’ll be very sore on the topic of his kids going away and will _really_ let Young have it…”

“No need. I’ll just quit if Young doesn’t listen to my mum,” Albus decided. He’d been thinking about it all afternoon, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would do that in a heartbeat rather than go to Wales for a year. He wasn’t going to miss the possible growth of his baby. He was going to be there for his sister-in-law and he was going to be a part of every scan and he and Scorpius were going to do loads of shopping and take loads of classes and—no. No. He wasn’t leaving. He would gladly give up his career if it meant being a good dad and husband and a grateful brother-in-law. “I’m not leaving now. Before maybe we could’ve both gone, but not now.”

“Definitely not now,” Scorpius agreed, a familiar edge of excitement to his words. “You know, I stopped by the Potter house after work, and I really think Nora might be pregnant. I wasn’t sure before because the potions were making both her and Lily act all moody and nauseated, but she turned down a cup of coffee.”

Albus’s jaw dropped. “What?! Nora?”

“Yeah! Said her stomach wasn’t up for it. When’s the last time you heard that?”

“Early on with Delilah!!” Albus said excitedly. He tried to keep his excitement rational. “But it could all be in her head, what’s the word?”

“Psychosomatic. Maybe, but I don’t think so. Albus?”

Albus patted gently at Scorpius’s bum. “Scorpius?”

“If she is pregnant…if everything worked out the way we’re hoping…tomorrow, for my birthday, can we…go shopping? Baby shopping? I know you said…well, I know you want to keep from getting our hopes up, and even if she is we’re still not out of the water as something could still happen, but…well, if it does happen, we can just donate the things we bought. And it’ll hurt, but I’ve been thinking about it, and it’ll hurt no matter what. I really want to _experience this_ , you know? I want to feel it in full and I don’t want to waste any time thinking about what might happen. I want to do all the things people do when they’re expecting babies. Classes, nursery decorating, baby name books…even if it doesn’t work out, at least we’ll have given it our all, you know? And if she’s not pregnant, if it didn’t work…can we just stay here tomorrow? Just us for the day, and then for dinner we can go to my dad’s for my birthday celebration. I think we’ll need the alone time.”

Albus, who had spent a good portion of his week fretting over this very thing, was breathlessly relieved to find that Scorpius had not only considered both possibilities but had created a plan for each. Albus only had one specific thing planned for his husband’s birthday.

“Even if things aren’t okay, can I still take you somewhere to see your present? It’ll be really quick, I promise.”

Scorpius beamed. It lit up his face and Albus’s heart, too. “Well, I’ll always go to see a present, Albus.”

Albus snickered. “Materialistic Malfoys.”

Scorpius was leaning in to kiss him when he paused. He sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

“ _Shit_ —my asparagus!! Not again!! This is not a good omen, Scorpius! This is the third bad omen this week; I’ve been counting them like Gantha said to do!”

“I'm nearly positive she was teasing you...I regret ever inviting Professor Gantha over for tea,” Scorpius mumbled, right as Albus booked it towards the kitchen to try and save his creation.

* * *

 

“And I’ve got great ideas about how to combine the ingredients, and it always seems to be going okay, but then I’ll start cooking and I’ll get distracted and – burnt. Ruined. All my hard work turned literally to ashes.”

His dad gave him a knowing look. He lowered his magazine and shifted in his chair. “Is this distraction…spouse-shaped?”

Albus felt blood rush to his cheeks and his neck. His dad laughed.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Just hang on ‘til you have kids. Then you won’t have the luxury of ‘distractions’ because you’ll have a son or daughter gripping your leg whining nonstop about _starving to death_ despite the million snacks they had throughout the day.”

“You must have another family out there, Dad, because I _never_ did that,” Albus scoffed. “I was patient with a petite appetite.”

His dad collapsed into a round of laughter. “Gin, Gin, come here, come listen to this…” Albus’s mum turned from her conversation with Scorpius and Lily and looked expectantly at Harry. “Albus says he was patient and had a ‘petite appetite’ when he was little.”

Ginny joined in on Harry’s laughter. She shook her head sadly once it pandered off. “Oh, how quickly the torturers forget their torture, while the victims are doomed to remember it nightly…”

“Poignant, Mum,” Albus said dryly.

“I’m a poet, what can I say?” His mum shrugged.

“Those are lyrics to a Pumpkin Pasties song,” Harry said.

Ginny shook her head distastefully. “You never let me have anything, Harry.”

“Is this about the cat? Because for the hundredth time, Gin, you can’t keep stealing people’s cats—”

“It was _not_ theft, it was a  _rescue_!”

“That cat was fine where it was!”

“No—his owner didn’t even put water outside for him and Philip doesn’t _want_ to be an outside cat, he wants to be an indoor cat!”

“You’re a bloody cat whisperer now, are you? Amazing.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re so…stone-hearted! I know you kept that squirrel in the shed for two weeks!”

“I—I—look, it was not ready to go back, there were extenuating circumstances—”

“Uh, Mum, Dad,” Albus said quickly, his eyes landing on a potential problem. Scorpius locked eyes with Albus from over Lily’s head. Lily appeared to be sobbing into his shirt. “My sister’s…crying.”

His parents didn’t seem as alarmed as Albus thought they should.

“Don’t look at her,” Harry said quickly. “Just pretend she’s not.”

“But…she’s my sister? And she’s crying?” Albus felt a flash of fury. “Did somebody hurt her? Did Caden end things with her?”

His mum shook her head. “No, she got a call from Charlie before we left. Emerald’s laid an egg—five, actually. This is, for some reason, a ‘miracle’, as Lulu kept blubbering…the poor girl’s really messed up, hormones are wicked things…” 

“Why do I have to look away?”

Lily turned around in Scorpius’s arms and glowered at Albus with such intensity that it made him jump. “Don’t look at me! This isn’t funny! If you laugh I’ll—I’ll—oh, you’ll regret it!!”

Albus quickly averted his eyes. “Right, I get it.”

They all fell silent. Scorpius’s soft words as he did his best to comfort her washed over all of them.

“It’s such a great thing, Opal will be so happy, Emerald will get more babies, it’ll be much better than last time, Lily, and all these babies will be just fine, and…and…is this helping? Am I helping? I hope I’m helping.”

“I-I’m just really very _happy_ ,” Lily admitted.

“Oh,” Scorpius said, relieved. “Well, that’s great. That’s a great thing, Lily! And if it makes you feel any better, your mood swings should end soon; the potion will work itself out in two to three weeks.”

“Thank Merlin, this is like hell. I don’t know how people like you do this all the time. Feel so much, I mean.” She lowered her voice, clearly so only Scorpius could hear her, but it was still easy for Albus to make her words out. “I cried for thirty minutes this morning because Caden made me breakfast.”

“People like _me_? I guess that’s a compliment…thanks,” Scorpius said. He patted her hair nicely. “Was it a good breakfast?”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding nearly choked up again even at the thought of it. Albus longed for a muggle video recorder.

“I’m sorry the potions messed with you so much, Lily,” Scorpius said. “We probably should’ve started you on a more conservative dose. I just wanted to make sure it worked, because I didn’t want to ask you to go through it all again, you know?”

“It’s fine. Just a few more weeks, right?”

“Right. Hang in there. We’re so grateful for you, Lily,” Scorpius said, this time sounding equally choked up, though he didn’t have a hormonal imbalance to blame. “Right, Al?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Right. Thanks for the eggs, Lily. Solid.”

His mum scowled at him. Albus shrugged back.

“Since when does Lily like emotional admissions of gratitude?” he demanded. He turned to his little sister. “Shall I sob on your shoulder and tell you how much I love and appreciate you?”

“Ew. Don’t you dare.”

Albus gestured at her and looked back towards his mum. “See?”

Albus was spared from whatever his mum would say next by the arrival of the people they’d been waiting for. Nora and James approached from the other side of the glass doors separating them from the maternity ward. Scorpius and Albus rose at the same moment and crossed over to the doors, to open them for Nora, but James had reached forward to do the same. They all three ended up freezing in place, their hands on the door and their eyes drifting from one another in confusion. While the three men stared at each other, Nora pushed the door open herself and stepped through cheerfully.

“Hello!” she greeted her family.

James followed in after her, looking as if he’d been hit in the face. He stared at them incredulously. He seemed very offended by their actions; Albus should’ve foreseen that. He sighed and braced himself.

“Let’s make one thing very clear,” James began. “ _I_ am the chivalrous one; _I_ open the doors. _You_ are the sarcastic one, Albus. You provide the dry, cutting comments. You’re the sweet one, Scorpius. You lift up everybody around you with your smile and kindness. _I_ am the door opener. Nora is _my_ wife and _I_ open doors for her and wait on her when she’s pregnant. Okay? My toes are feeling very stamped on.”

“Sorry,” Scorpius said at once with a grimace. “We’re just…so grateful.”

“I’m not sorry. Nora’s doing some amazing for us, we want to do nice things back for her!” argued Albus. His irritation melted as Nora pulled him in for a quick hug. She tapped the top of his head afterwards.

“I really don’t need _three_ ‘papa bears’ hovering over me, though I appreciate the sentiment, and it’s very sweet, Al.”

“I want to help,” Albus insisted.

She smiled at him. “Let’s figure out if there’s even any reason for that first, shall we? Sorry we’re late, Scorpius. Rory was a little nervous about being left with a sitter.”

“A sitter?!” Harry said, outraged. “I thought Dean and Seamus were watching them! Ginny and I would’ve stayed with them, you should’ve told us!”

“We, uh…haven’t talked to her dads about…this…yet,” James admitted. “We knew they’d freak out and say they didn’t want her undergoing any ‘experimental’ procedures, so we figured we’d wait until after the procedure was done and successful to show that everything was just fine!”

“Yeah…that’s going to backfire,” Ginny said. “Merlin, Harry, you know you and I are going to be blamed for this, right?”

“It’ll be us ‘evilly using their daughter’ to further our family’s control…or something,” Harry agreed, annoyed.

“Ignore them,” Nora implored. “They’re going through simultaneous midlife crises. Both wish they’d had more kids, now they’re too old– you know how it goes.”

“Not actually, no…we’ve got _plenty_ ,” Ginny said.

“Oh, thanks!” Albus muttered.

“Not to interrupt this enlightening conversation, but I feel really lightheaded, and I’d like to find out whether Nora’s pregnant or not and go home,” Lily whined.

“Okay,” Scorpius agreed. “Ready?” He looked at Nora. She nodded. He smiled. She gave him a thumbs up. “Let’s do this.”

Albus’s heart was pounding irregularly again as they walked into an exam room. It was a tight fit, with all their family crowded in, and Albus wondered if Scorpius was regretting his decision not to tell Draco yet. He caught him looking somewhat forlornly at a space near the door, a space his dad could’ve occupied. But soon he was readying the potion, and going by the way his hands were trembling, he too was unbearably excited. Albus wasn’t even sure how to contain his racing emotions. All he knew was that he desperately wanted it to be positive. He desperately wanted this to work. He had tried so hard to keep himself from getting too attached to the idea, but it’d been in vain. He couldn’t imagine a different path towards parenthood now, and if this failed, he knew he’d be devastated.

Scorpius set the glass full of potion in front of Nora. Everybody held their breath. She seemed remarkably calm as she reached for the glass and took a small sip. The following minute seemed excruciatingly long. Albus squirmed in place. Scorpius bounced nervously over to Albus’s side and took his hand tightly. Albus squeezed back, glad for the contact. After nearly fifty-five seconds, Albus saw the surface of the potion begin to shift. Seconds later, brilliant, multicolored sparks shot up into the air. The room dissolved into cheers. Albus felt like the floor had shifted beneath him; he wasn’t sure what to do or what to say, leading him to stand there grinning like an awestruck idiot. Scorpius was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, James was kissing Nora’s cheek, Lily looked like she might’ve started tearing up again, his mum and dad were holding hands and smiling, and Albus…

Was going to be a dad. It didn’t feel real yet. He’d thought it would; he’d thought those sparks would make it seem like reality, but he still felt like he was living in a dream. This was real, he reminded himself. He was going to be a dad. And it was all because of his sisters. His sisters had given up parts of themselves for him, for Scorpius. Standing there, overcome with extreme love for his family, Albus felt himself tearing up, too. He was glad when Scorpius threw his arms around him and pulled him against his chest. He hid his face into his husband’s chest and squeezed him tightly. Their baby. _They_ were going to be dads.

“Al?” He heard his mum inquire. “You okay, love?”

Albus nodded, still a bit dazed. He remained as such until they were back at the Den, and then, all at once, his emotions crashed through his disbelief. Lily yelped as he yanked her into a violently strong hug. He squeezed her tightly, overcome with gratitude but not sure how to voice it. Lily didn’t find his gratitude very enjoyable. She tensed in his embrace.

“Ease up! Ease up!” she complained. “I’m going to get sick all over you, and I’m warning you– I had spaghetti for lunch!”

He’d forgotten that she still spent most of her days nauseated. He loosened his arms and leaned back. When he locked eyes with his sister, he felt abruptly embarrassed. He cleared his throat.

“Thanks, you know. For what you did for us. It was really…lovely. It was lovely,” he settled on.

She groaned. “Oh no, we’re doing this. An emotional conversation. You’re really…really doing this. Okay. Wow. Well. Thanks. And…you’re welcome. And…I hope the egg you lot ended up with didn’t have the poor eyesight gene, but we’ll see, won’t we? Er…we’re not going to hug again, are we?”

He scoffed. He stepped back from her completely and crossed his arms. “What? Ew. No way. It’s over now. Just wanted to say thanks.”

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome. I probably wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I did it once…” She trailed off, a thoughtful look covering her face. “Interestingly enough, I’ve had many life experiences I feel that same way about.”

“Yeah, how about you keep those experiences to yourself?” Albus suggested, false cheer in his tone.

“I was absolutely planning to.”

Albus managed to catch Nora before she and James returned back home to their kids. He hugged her gently and made a decision.

“I’m going to come over and make dinner five times a week, okay? To help out. And any time you need anything, Scorpius and I are right there,” Albus said.

“Yeah,” Scorpius agreed at once. “If you need any new maternity clothes or _anything_ , I want to buy it.”

She gave them a softly amused smile once she leaned back. “I really don’t expect you two to wait on me. In fact, if you both do it to the level James always does, I’ll probably lose my mind, so let’s not do that.”

“We won’t ‘wait on you’, then,” Albus persisted. “But I still want to do dinner for your family five times a week. Okay?”

She considered that. “Okay. Fine by me. Jamie?”

James shrugged. “Yeah, go on—I hate cooking. But remember that Finnigan doesn’t eat animal products! Makes it very tricky. “

“I’m up for the challenge,” Albus promised them.

Scorpius stepped in. “And we can babysit every Friday night! You can go do Sevens things!”

“Yeah!” Albus agreed. He knocked hips with Scorpius, thankful for his good idea. “When’s the last time you two got to do Sevens things?”

“Without the kids with us? Hmm…” James trailed off thoughtfully, unable to come up with a certain time frame.

“Yep. It’s settled. We’ve got your backs,” Albus said.

After the Potters apparated home, Albus turned to Scorpius. They shared a stunned, overjoyed smile, and without knowing who’d moved forward first, they were wrapped up in a tight embrace. Albus pressed his face into Scorpius’s neck. The knowledge that, right at this very moment, Scorpius’s child— _their child_ —was growing was both surreal and overwhelming; while the idea seemed so vast that he was having a difficult time really grasping it, it also made him so impossibly excited for the future that he could hardly stand still. Scorpius was clearly just as thrilled; his body seemed to be almost shaking as he withheld jumping up and down in place. It was all Albus could do to keep from snogging him senseless on his parents’ kitchen table. He settled for kissing the crook of his neck and holding him tighter.

“It worked,” said Scorpius.

“It did,” Albus agreed thickly.

“Happy birthday to me! To us! To our child!!”

Albus laughed into his husband’s shoulder. He knew he should’ve said _let’s take this slowly, step-by-step, not get ahead of ourselves_ …but his heart was already a hundred kilometers ahead.

* * *

 

Their ‘happy birthday, good morning’ shag wasn’t going too well. Albus had hardly gotten things going before Scorpius began a scattered conversation about anything and everything baby related, and no matter how hard Albus tried, his husband seemed more intent on his racing, excited thoughts than his excited body. It was pretty impressive willpower.

“And what do you think about schools? Because I was thinking we could send our baby to muggle schools for a few years for the socialization and worldly experience, you know James and Nora are sending all their kids starting next term to be with Rory and— _oh,_ wowza…!”

Albus thought they were finally getting somewhere, and for a few moments, they were. His husband let his head fall back against the pillow and made a humming noise that made Albus’s neck flush. But after only a few more moments, with his head still thrown back and his eyes still shut, he said:

“What do you think about playgroups? It’s important for toddlers to socialize with other toddlers for their emotional and social development, but our child probably won’t have any cousins in their age group, so we’ll need to find some new friends with kids…” Scorpius opened his eyes and looked at Albus. “Where do we find parent friends? Stake out art galleries? Organic markets?”

Albus gave up. He moved his hand to Scorpius’s thigh and dropped his head onto the pillow beside Scorpius’s.

“Scorpius?” he asked.

Scorpius was pink-cheeked and flushed, but his eyes were sparkling and a million miles away. “Albus?”

“Do you want to shag later? I’m getting the feeling you’re not really focused on this.”

Scorpius read the insecurity and insult that Albus had worked very hard not to show. He leaned in and kissed Albus at once, the kind of kiss that made Albus’s thoughts scatter wildly and his hands grapple for skin. He pressed his cheek to Albus’s afterwards.

“Sorry,” Scorpius mumbled softly. “It’s not you. I’m just so excited, you know how my mind gets…it’s like the week I discovered Muggle pacemakers…trust me, I’m very into this, my mind is just very…into everything else all at the same time.”

Albus couldn’t help but laugh at the memory. Scorpius had ranted all about pacemakers for _days_ , including in the midst of lovemaking. He’d be lying if he said his husband’s excitement about life and everything in it wasn’t one of the main reasons he loved him.

“It’s _your_ birthday. Tell me what _you_ want,” decided Albus.

Scorpius leaned back and met Albus’s eyes. He gave a breathtaking smile; Albus felt his arousal surge at the sight of it. 

“I really liked what was going on before,” he admitted. Even now, after all their years together, he seemed a bit shy. Albus moved his hand back and continued his previous ministrations at once, now that he knew Scorpius had been enjoying it. “Can we keep talking, though? I want to talk to you, too.” Scorpius reached up and grasped Albus’s face. Albus smiled as his thumbs swept over his cheeks, his every motion seeping affection. “Clever hands, clever mouth, clever mind,” he said, sweet affection threaded between each word. 

Albus personally preferred sex so intense that he couldn’t even remember his own name, but it was Scorpius’s birthday, and if Scorpius wanted silly, slow, and chatty sex, that’s exactly what he’d get.

“Nuh uh,” Albus scolded playfully. He leaned in and kissed Scorpius deeply. “ _I’m_ the one doing the complimenting, and I’ve got a lot to say…”

It turned out that Scorpius also had a lot to say. Albus couldn’t remember a lengthier or more talkative birthday shag, but he couldn’t say he really minded it; the way Scorpius was glowing afterwards, completely and utterly happy in every way, told him he’d done everything exactly right.

“Well, happy birthday,” Albus said, out of breath and equally happy. He turned to face Scorpius and reached up, gently sweeping his fingers through his hair. He loved these moments right afterwards nearly best of all. They snuggled up together and pressed smiles into each other’s skin. “I love you. Thanks for another year.”

“You’re welcome! For not dying, I mean. And let me tell you, Al…there have been some close calls. Some very very close calls!”

Scorpius laughed at his own joke. Albus snorted, amused.

“Yeah, like that time you slipped in the shower? Or the time I almost made shepherd’s pie with turkey instead of beef? Or when I accidentally served champagne in wine glasses?” asked Albus sarcastically.

Scorpius appeared scandalized. “You served warm champagne in a merlot glass, Albus!”

“The _horror_!” Albus cried. His grin was cheeky, and thankfully, Scorpius adored it. He smiled as his husband stroked his hip. “What if I told you I purposefully did that because I didn’t like our guest?”

Scorpius blinked, surprised. “What? What do you have against Healer Robert?” He gasped. “You knew he was a wine enthusiast!! How?!”

“I did my research. Don’t worry about it,” Albus sniffed. He rubbed his hands down Scorpius’s bare back and over his bum. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

Scorpius frowned. “He looks at me in a special way?”

“Yes. Like _this_.” Albus channeled his attraction to his husband into his smoldering look. Scorpius’s cheeks pinked.

“That’s _obscene_ , I never noticed!”

“I did. I don’t like it. Hence me serving warm champagne to the wine connoisseur in a wine glass.”

“Petty,” Scorpius commented. He grinned. “I shouldn’t find that so attractive.”

“I’ll be petty for you any day. Just wait ‘til you hear the things I think in my head when he winks at you…I’m a dangerous man; Robert should watch out,” Albus said, only half-teasing. He was dangerous and he would definitely get revenge if Robert ever made a move.

“Well, I feel the same when Lumie looks at you too long,” Scorpius admitted.

“No need to worry about that. I know exactly what I want. And it’s all right here.” He punctuated his admission with another deep kiss. Scorpius was smiling when he leaned back.

“I love you, and I love our baby, and I love our family, and I love everything. Is that weird? I think I love everything. I’m so happy—you make me so happy. Everything’s just so perfect. So wonderful…”

Scorpius trailed off happily. Albus gave himself a mental high-five. He always knew it was his best lovemaking when Scorpius was reduced to his _‘I love everything’_ spiel. He only gave that speech after really great sex or sometimes after holding newborn babies or puppies.

“I won’t say I love _everything_ , but Merlin do I love you,” Albus admitted. He nuzzled his cheek against Scorpius’s. “And our baby.”

“We’re going to be such good parents. We’ll be as good parents as we are husbands _.”_

“Yeah,” Albus said, and he realized for probably the very first time in his entire life that he _did_ feel entirely confident about his abilities. He felt incredibly in his element when he envisioned being a father. And maybe he’d change his mind once their baby was actually here, but lying there, envisioning their future, he wondered if maybe he’d finally found what he was meant to do with his life.

* * *

 

“I wish you would _murder me_ …every other day you’re dying to _avada_ me, but _today_ you’re suddenly so anti-murder?!”

His sister’s dramatic groan earned her an eye roll from Albus. He stared, unaffected, as she rolled over miserably on the sofa, her arms locked around her stomach. On the other side of the sitting room, Scorpius was excitedly showing all the baby clothes they’d bought that day to Nora and Ginny. Albus thought about going to join in their conversation, but despite how many times he rolled his eyes at his sister, he _did_ feel genuine pity (and guilt) for her discomfort. He heaved a sigh and rose from his armchair. He walked over and grabbed her ankles, lifted her legs up, and sat beneath them. He patted her calf nicely afterwards.

“I still think you’re being a bit over-dramatic, but would you like some ginger biscuits?” he asked.

She groaned louder and blindly threw a pillow at Albus. Unfortunately, she’d inherited a pretty good aim; it smacked Albus across the face hard enough to make his eyes water.

“Well, fine!” he snapped, annoyed. “No ginger biscuits for you!!”

She managed a weak (yet still rude) hand gesture. Albus shoved her legs off his lap, annoyed, but his shove was a bit too hard; she went rolling right off the sofa and landed hard on the floor facedown. Albus felt his heart drop at once. As annoying as she was, she was still his baby sister, and the sight of her falling so hard to the floor made his stomach churn with regret and worry.

“Oh, _shit_ —I’m sorry, Lulu, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…are you okay?”

She mumbled something into the carpet in a pathetic tone. Albus’s heart felt horribly heavy with worry.

“Oh, no…are you crying?! Did I break you?!”

She mumbled something else in a slightly angrier tone. Albus’s stomach clenched nervously as Caden spotted their conflict from across the room; he ended his conversation with Harry at once and walked over.

“Look,” Albus greeted Caden warily, his hands held up in defense. “I know it looks like I did this, and I did, but she’s Lily and despite how pathetic she’s been lately, nobody can _really_ hurt her; she’s the one who hurts other people. She’s the bully! I’m the victim! Always!”

Lily rolled over onto her back. She spat out a mouthful of her hair and glared at Albus.

“Fuck. You,” she said.

“Oh, great—she’s back,” Albus sighed.

He realized she was probably actually feeling as poorly as she said when she let Caden pull her to her feet and fuss over her. She never let him dote on her like that, at least never in front of people. After a few moments of cuddling on the sofa and having her hair stroked, she whispered something to Caden.

“Ginger biscuits?” he clarified. She nodded. He leaned in and kissed her. “Sure. I think I can probably do that. And I’ll try my hardest _not_ to poison them.”

“ _Do_ try your hardest, Caden. I know it’ll be a difficult journey, but I believe in you.”

They were both laughing as Caden smacked her arm gently with a cushion. Albus gave her a dry look as Caden rose to get her the ginger biscuits she’d turned down from Albus only a few seconds ago.

“I thought you didn’t want ginger biscuits.”

“I didn’t want _your_ ginger biscuits. You’d never let me live it down. You already keep saying I'm being 'over-dramatic' when I'm _not._ No,” she decided. She stretched out and propped her ankles on the edge of the coffee table that Scorpius had paid thousands for. “Ginger biscuits are a powerful gift, Al. You don’t give that power to just anyone.”

Albus stared at the floor, his brow furrowed in confusion and affront. “So you give Caden Rowle that power but not _me_ —your brother?! Who shares your blood? Who—”

“Once shoved me off my training broom when I was two?” Lily completed flatly.

“Oh, not _this_ again…”

“I still believe that head trauma was what made me need glasses in the first place.”

“Lily, our _dad_ wears glasses. It’s genetic! And you know what else?! You’re a _nightmare_ when you’re moody!”

“So you finally know what it’s like interacting with yourself.” Albus gaped. Lily laughed. “Fuck, that was a good one.”

Albus sighed again. “Okay, look. I’m trying to…” he trailed off, searching for the right word. “Support you—” Lily arched an eyebrow. “Er—I mean, _be there_ for you…” her eyebrow rose higher. Albus winced. “Not to say you need your elder brother doing that because I know you’re touchy about being independent and such...er…I’m trying to…be a little bit nicer than usual because I know you did something really amazing for me and Scorpius, and I appreciate it, and…I should just leave the emotional stuff to Scorpius, shouldn’t I?”

“Probably. At least until I can get my pocket phone out to record this…”

“Don’t you dare!”

“I dare. There’s not much I don’t dare to do.”

Albus stamped his foot, annoyed. “Lily! Thank you, okay?! Thank you for giving us this chance at having a family and thank you for being so generous and thank you for enduring all of this for us and—”

“Oh, Muggle Gods, please stop.”

“No, I’m going to finish! We appreciate it so much and we want you to know that we—”

“Oh, gross…”

“—Really love you and we appreciate you and we’re going to be here for you no matter what and Scorpius said I should really stress the ‘no matter what’ part and—”

“I’m going to hit you. Stop!!” Lily leaned over and slapped her hand over Albus’s mouth. He continued on stubbornly.

“AND DESPITE OUR BICKERING, THERE ARE MANY THINGS I ADMIRE IN YOU AND THEY’RE THINGS I’D BE HONORED IF MY CHILD HAD AND YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON YOUR BROTHERS TO BE THERE FOR YOU—”

“Please don’t make me throttle you!!”

“—AND I KNOW THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE AN AMAZING AUNT TO MY CHILD BECAUSE YOU ALREADY ARE ONE!” he finished, his words muffled into his sister’s palm.

She looked at him in horror. “That’s the soppiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Here you go, unpoisoned ginger biscuits,” Caden greeted. Albus looked up as he joined them. He fell down beside Lily; Lily curled up to his side at once and took the offered package.

“Good. I really need them, now more than ever...”

“Oh, shut up. You know you love me,” Albus said.

“Do I? _Do I_ know that?” Lily asked, her eyebrow cocked again. She took an aggressive bite out of a ginger biscuit. Albus gave her a pointed look. She caved quickly. “Obviously I do, you prat. Just don’t get weird about it, okay? I love you, but I’ll still bat-bogey your face off if I have to. Speaking of: are you and Scorpius _finally_ telling Draco about the baby tonight?”

“We only found out last night! But, yes! Later, during dinner, and don’t you _dare_ tell him, Lily!” Albus said firmly, as she stood.

“I’m not! I’m going to talk to my dad, Albus, relax!”

“ _Our_ dad,” Albus corrected. She swung her hair over her shoulder and pranced off without another word.

Albus looked at Caden. He reached up and patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry you’ve got to live with that.”

“Mmm, yeah…don’t be,” Caden said back. Albus couldn’t tell whether his smile was sarcastic or suggestive, but he didn’t like it either way.

“Seriously, is she that moody all the time? It’s exhausting.”

“Nah, I’m fine with it,” Caden admitted. Albus arched an eyebrow.

“Seriously? She kicked a hole in the wall over ice cream, Caden.”

“Not when I was there. She’s actually been sort of…sweet. With me, I mean. Don’t tell her I called her sweet, though.”

“I’d never do that; I don’t want you to die. But Lily being ‘sweet’ is _terrifying_. I’d have nightmares.”

“You don’t know her like I do. She _can_ be sweet. And when she’s moody like this, she’s sweet more often. And there are other benefits.”

It didn’t take Albus long. He didn’t know a lot about women or their bodies, but he did know that when hormones were messed with, libido usually was too. As if those two needed a boost. He grimaced. “Ugh, Merlin, gross! _Disgusting,_ Caden, I don’t want to hear that! I’m still angry with you both for what I had to endure on Christmas Eve! The last thing you two need is…more incentive.”

“Sorry, I was just trying to answer your question honestly.” He shrugged. “Things are really okay with us, hole-in-the-wall and all.”

“Yeah, well, you’re dating my sister…you’d pretty much have to be fine with just about anything…she’s a force of nature, and not a good one. I was thinking, like…a tsunami…or a mudslide…or a devastating forest fire…”

“As much as I’d love to listen to you insult my girlfriend, I think I’ll go back to my conversation with your dad.”

“Fine, sure,” Albus said. He mocked Caden’s sarcastic wave. “Have fun.”

As insane as he thought Caden was, he knew he didn’t want Caden to ever really end things with Lily. He’d gotten used to having him around, and anyway, Albus was the only one allowed to hurt Lily’s feelings and get away with it.

* * *

 

The Manor was spotless and even more regal than usual. The house elves had gone above and beyond for Scorpius’s birthday; childhood photos were blown up and lined the entrance hall, so that when they entered, Scorpius’s adorable little smile greeted them over and over again.

“Oh…wow…” Ginny and Lily chorused together, but by some miracle, they refrained from saying anything judgmental out loud.

Albus would’ve ordinarily found this delightfully ridiculous, but today, he was happy to find himself surrounded by childhood photos. As he looked at every one, his heart grew and grew, because he found himself imagining their child. Would he or she look like this? Have those eyes, that smile, those cheekbones? What features would they get from Scorpius? He was giddy and couldn’t contain himself. He sped up and pushed his way between James and Nora; Nora smiled at him as he reached for her hand.

“Let me guess…you want to know how soon you can see the baby’s features on the imaging scans,” Nora guessed.

Albus grinned at her. “Yep.”

“Technically they form around eleven weeks, but it won’t look how you’re expecting it to ‘til near the end of the pregnancy,” she said.

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said. “How are you feeling? I know Scorpius has probably asked you that three times already, but it’s my turn.”

“Four, by my count,” James corrected with a laugh.

“And _you’ve_ asked me that _ten_ times, Jamie Baby,” Nora reminded him. James continued grinning and shrugged. “I feel fine,” she reassured Albus. “The sickness isn’t even near as bad as it was with Evra or Henry. A bit tired, but that’s to be expected.”

“And you’re still feeling okay about this, right?” he asked nervously.

“Are you and Scorpius going to ask me that every day?” Her tone was gentle, but Albus knew she probably feared how _long_ the nine months would seem if they all harassed her every single day of it.

“No,” Albus promised at once. He tightened his grip on her hand. “No, we won’t! Just want to make sure you’re all right, that’s all.”

“I’ll let you know if she’s not all right,” James said, and before Albus could say much, he’d moved and pushed between them, breaking up their joined hands. He was so touchy about other people taking care of Nora. Albus shook his head in disbelief. _Why are my siblings so annoying?_

“Sure, James. You do that.” Albus patted his brother’s arm, and with that, he hurried to join back up with his husband.

* * *

 

It was incredibly difficult for Scorpius to keep the secret from his dad. All throughout dinner, he had that impatient air of somebody waiting to blurt out a secret, and his dad didn’t miss it. After a few half-hearted conversations about other things, Draco set his fork down.

“Scorpius, are you okay? Is something wrong?”

Scorpius shook his head slowly, a somewhat maniacal grin in place. Albus quickly leaned over and took Scorpius’s hand.

“He’s just excited about his birthday,” he lied. He laughed nervously right after. Lying to Draco was much more difficult than lying to anybody else. Albus had never seen it, but he knew instinctively that his father-in-law would have one of the most gutting _I’m disappointed in you_ looks. He never wanted it aimed at him.

“It seems like there’s something you want to tell me,” Draco insisted, looking between Albus and Scorpius uneasily. “Is everything okay?”

He was clearly anticipating the worst. Albus glanced at Scorpius. He gave him a pointed look; the last thing they wanted was Draco suffering on Scorpius’s birthday over fearful suspicions that weren’t even close to the truth. Scorpius nodded back. He was so nervous that his hands were absolutely trembling as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a wrapped box. Draco furrowed his brow in confusion as Scorpius passed the box to him.

“It’s _your_ birthday,” he reminded Scorpius.

Scorpius bounced anxiously in his seat. He squeezed Albus’s hand to the point of pain. “Please open it before I explode into a million tiny pieces.”

“Okay…” Draco said uneasily. He looked suspiciously around the table. Albus followed his gaze. Nora was leaning into James’s side, Lily was beaming proudly, Caden nudged Iset who nudged Rose, drawing their attention to the front, Ginny had her hand pressed over her mouth and was squirming, no doubt dying to blurt out the news herself, and Harry was smiling at Draco. Albus wondered if his dad was remembering the first time he’d been told that he was going to be a granddad. It would surely be just as much of a shock for Draco as it’d been for Harry. Draco pulled the ribbon off the present first. He slowly undid the wrapping, much neater and slower than anybody at the table would’ve preferred. After watching him painstakingly undoing the taped corners, Lily broke.

“I can do it for you!” she said impatiently. “Toss it here and it’ll be unwrapped in a second!”

Draco looked up at her. “I like the paper,” he explained, a bit sheepishly. “I don’t want to rip it.”

Albus grinned smugly. He’d chosen the wrapping paper. It was a deep, magnificent emerald with thin silver stripes. Scorpius patted Albus’s thigh happily.

“I’ll buy you more,” Lily said through gritted teeth, clearly suffering from the anticipation.

“Patience…” Rose sang to her. She lightly hit Caden’s arm. “Your ‘patience lessons’ aren’t going so well, Caden.”

“There we go,” Draco finally said. He set the paper nicely to the side. Albus felt a bit lightheaded with anticipation as he pried the lid to the box up, exposing the gift they’d purchased in Diagon Alley today: a small, solid silver plaque, the same kind that hung on the fancy Malfoy family tree wall in the first drawing room, with a blank space in front of the engraved words _Potter-Malfoy_. It took Draco a moment to realize what it was.

“For the family tree,” Albus supplied.

Draco looked up, his eyes wide. Scorpius fidgeted some more.

“We haven’t picked the name yet, but once we do, we can take it back and get it engraved,” Albus continued, when he realized Scorpius was not going to be able to say anything. His husband bounced up and down impatiently in his seat.

“This…are you…is this…” Draco was speechless. It was a funny thing to see. Scorpius finally broke. With an excited squeak, he jumped up from his seat and walked over, throwing his arms around his still-seated dad.

“We’re _having a baby, Dad_!” he cried, elated.

 _Finally_. Cheers broke out along the table. Draco reached up and patted lightly at Scorpius’s back, his eyes wide and stunned. James popped open the champagne they’d brought. Albus was beaming so hard it was giving him a headache.

“But…a _baby_? How? When?” Draco finally managed. He hadn’t seemed to really process what they’d said. He was still holding the plaque gently in his hands like he expected it to disappear at any moment.

“ _Scorpius’s_ baby genetically,” Albus told Draco, because he knew Scorpius wouldn’t; he seemed insistent on not claiming any more connection to their baby than Albus had. But considering this continued on the Malfoy line in a very real way, it was important to Albus that Draco understood. “It’s all because of Scorpius. He spent months creating his own magical version of Muggle fertility treatments, Draco. But we couldn’t have done it without our family. Lily gave us an egg. And Nora is carrying for us. In nine months, give or take, you’re going to be a grandfather.”

The knowledge that he was going to be a granddad paired with the realization that the entire family had come together in such a selfless way to give _his family_ that sort of gift was clearly too much for Draco. He looked from Lily to Nora, his lips parted and his eyes growing damp. He was _entirely_ speechless; he wasn’t even making sputtering noises this time.

“Mine and _Albus’s_ baby,” Scorpius corrected, just as Albus knew he would. “Dad? What do you think?”

Albus was getting a bit nervous. What if there was some…traditional _thing_ in the Malfoy family that said things like this were absolutely forbidden and Draco’s speechlessness and wet eyes were from horror and not joy? Actually, now that Albus considered it, there sort of _was_ a rule like that; the Malfoys were traditionally all about pureblood lines, and Lily was a half-blood, and Nora was a half-blood…but then again, so was Albus, and Draco hadn’t ever seemed anything but happy about his and Scorpius’s marriage…but what if he’d been pretending all along? What if he secretly hated Albus and hated this idea and what if—

 _Oh, no_. Albus’s jaw dropped as the first tear slipped down Draco’s cheek. He looked nervously at his mum; she’d already risen. She and Scorpius wrapped their arms around Draco’s shoulders, arm over arm, as he struggled to get grip on his emotions.

“Sorry,” he told them, his embarrassment palpable. “Sorry. It’s just…this is one of the nicest things I’ve ever...it’s one of the nicest things anybody has ever done for my family, for my son.”

Albus supposed this was second only to Astoria ultimately giving up her life to have Scorpius. To Albus, who’d been raised by a man who had given up everything—even his own life—for the people he loved and even strangers, what Nora and Lily had done (and were doing) was moving and wonderful, but it hadn’t hit him as powerfully as it had affected Draco. He guessed, to Draco, it was astoundingly generous and pure.

When he looked directly at Lily and Nora in turn and thanked them, even Albus felt his eyes grow hot. Lily and Nora—both extremely overemotional as it was, thanks to the potions for Lily and the pregnancy for Nora—teared up at Draco’s gratitude. Their dad wrapped his arm around Lily’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head. Draco finally seemed to come back to his senses. He rose from his chair and pulled Scorpius into a tight hug, probably the warmest Albus had ever witnessed. Scorpius was close to blubbering by the time they moved back and barely managed to keep the tears at bay. To Albus’s surprise, Draco set his hand on his shoulder and beckoned him to him. Albus tripped in his haste to rise. When his father-in-law pulled him into a tight hug—absolutely the first hug that felt warm and full of love rather than polite and a bit awkward—he found himself gripping back just as firmly.

“ _You’re_ my favorite Potter,” his father-in-law admitted softly. “But I’m proud to have the Malfoy line mix with the Potters this way, too.”

Albus never got the impression that Draco was Lily’s biggest fan. While he’d seemed to feel somewhat protective over her during the time he was at Hogwarts, that was probably just because he knew Scorpius cared about her and he was close with Ginny; he’d often appeared just as frustrated with her teenage antics as Albus had always felt. However, there was a genuine touch of affection and gentleness as he walked over and pulled _her_ into a hug too, the very first the two had ever shared. And when he and Nora shared a hug, Albus felt his eyes burning with more insistence. Draco mumbled something to Nora, she said something back in a soothing, reassuring tone, they both shared a smile, and that was that.

“I feel like it’s _my_ birthday,” Draco admitted.

“Having grandkids feels like that every day,” Harry smiled. That smile gradually faltered. “Except when they projectile vomit all over your face...”

“Ugh, yeah,” Ginny agreed. “Feel less gift-like at times like that.”

“Mum!” James complained, horrified. “My children are gifts every second of every day!! Right, Nora?!”

“Absolutely!” she affirmed. She looked at James a second later, her expression softening. “Oh, well, except for that brief time after they start teething when they don’t know yet not to bite…” she and James grimaced. She crossed her arms over her chest automatically. James inclined his head in agreement.

“Okay, yeah,” he said to his parents. “They’re gifts _99.9%_ of the time.”

“95%,” corrected Lily. “And if you two really knew what Finnigan gets up to when you’re not looking…80%.”

“Not our child, though,” Albus interrupted firmly. He smiled at Draco and Scorpius. “Our child will be an _angel_ 100% of the time.”

“They all say that,” Ginny hissed to Harry. “We said that, remember, with every single baby…”

“Felt like such a joke after a certain point…” he agreed.

“ _OI_!” James, Albus, and Lily chorused.

“Oh, look at that. Our little in-sync babies,” Ginny said, amused. She leaned in towards Harry and whispered: “ _Demon babies_.”

“Scorpius _was_ an angel,” Draco admitted. “Honestly, he really, really was.”

“It’s a bit interesting, don’t you think?” Rose asked everybody. “Because on the one hand, the baby could be like Scorpius—a proclaimed _angel_ —or like Lily, a proclaimed and definite _demon_. Or a weird sort of…unstable mixture of both…I’m going to make a genetics chart…find all the possible physical combinations and temperate combinations with these two…see which ones have the greatest chance of becoming reality…Draco, do you have genealogy records here for the Greengrass side, too?”

“I…do, yes…” he said, a bit bemused by Rose’s proclamation.

They finished their meal, had cake, Scorpius opened all his presents, and then they returned home. Albus helped Scorpius store all the baby things they’d purchased that day in the spare room that was going to be a nursery very soon.

“This is really happening,” Albus realized. He set an adorable green sleepsuit on the bed and sat down beside it, stunned. Telling Draco had made it all feel very real. “Merlin’s…saggy…Y-fronts…”

Scorpius fell into predictable laughter at Albus’s inherited swear. Albus looked up at his husband.

“Scorpius. We’re _really_ going to have a baby. This is _happening._ ”

Scorpius was smiling, but for once, his excitement wasn’t making him antsy or hyper. Instead, he crossed over to Albus, and before Albus could say a word, he’d gently pushed him back onto the bed.

“Oh,” Albus said wickedly, a mischievous grin cropping up. His heart picked up pace as his husband hovered over him. He continued grinning through their kiss.

“I’m so happy,” Scorpius repeated, but this time, it was deep, intense, _entirely_ focused. Albus very rarely saw this side of his husband. His suggestive nature was usually more flirty and submissive; there was something extremely exciting about every rare glimpse at Scorpius’s more commanding side. Albus reached up and took Scorpius’s face in his hands and countered his intensity with some of his own. _This_ was something Albus was great at. Intense lovemaking, total and complete focus and devotion…it was one of his best talents.

“Me too,” he realized.

* * *

 

“What about…chocolate soup?”

“Hmm…” Albus mused. He looked at his nephew. Finnigan was sitting atop the counter enthusiastically engaging Albus in conversation as he’d been doing every single night since Albus had started cooking dinner for James and Nora (a little over four months ago now). “Chocolate soup…let me think on that one, Finnigan.”

“It’s a great idea.”

Albus gently poked Finnigan’s tummy with a serving spoon. Finnigan collapsed into giggles. “I don’t think your mummy would want me to feed you ‘chocolate soup’ for dinner.”

“Daddy would like it!” Finnigan said.

“True…but James isn’t exactly the best judge of what’s nutritious,” Albus reminded him.

“HEY! GIVE ME! RORY, GIVE IT BACK! MUMMY!! RORY TOOK MY BEST SWING!” Henry shrieked. Albus peeked through the window above the sink; Henry collapsed dramatically onto the grass and started sobbing while Rory and Evra swung side-by-side on the swings. Nora and James walked over and began mediating. Albus had just turned back to the ingredients on the counter to try and decide what to make when Scorpius entered the kitchen, Delilah toddling along beside him.

“Say ‘Scorpius’… _Scor—pea—us_ …” Scorpius said slowly.

Delilah looked up at him and smiled. She tripped a second later; thankfully, Scorpius leaned over and caught her before she hit the floor.

“Uh oh!” he said gently. “Yikes!!”

Delilah fell into giggles. For whatever reason, they’d discovered last week that Delilah _loved_ when Scorpius said ‘yikes’. He helped her back to her feet.

“Let’s try again, you can do it! Good job!!” he encouraged.

Delilah was toddling almost everywhere now, but she sometimes got discouraged when she fell down and would ask to be held after that. Albus grinned to see her resume her toddling confidently right after her stumble.

“Hey, did you figure it out yet?” Scorpius greeted.

Albus’s heart melted as Delilah made a beeline for him. He kneeled down and opened his arms; he was beaming as Delilah walked right into them. He lifted his youngest niece up and kissed her adorable face.

“What a good job you’re doing!” he praised her. She leaned in and nuzzled his cheek. “Such a big girl! Do you want to sit up here with Finnigan and help me cook?”

She gave an excited gasp. Albus took that as a yes. He sat her on Finnigan’s other side. Finnigan immediately wrapped a protective arm around his little sister, to make sure she didn’t slip off the counter.

“No, I haven’t,” Albus admitted to Scorpius. “I’m running out of meal ideas. Some people are picky eaters.” He glanced at Finnigan pointedly. Finnigan didn’t miss it.

“They don’t even _ask_ the chickens if they _want_ to be killed, Alby.”

Albus and Scorpius exchanged an amused look. Albus looked back at their nephew. “I know, Finnigan. I’m just saying…I can only feed your family ‘tofish’ and chips so many times before you lot stage an uprising.”

Delilah made a distinctly displeased sound. Albus guessed she knew by now what the words ‘tofish and chips’ meant, and wasn’t happy about it.

“Chocolate soup!” Finnigan told him again, as if that solved everything.

“Chocolate _soup_!” Scorpius exclaimed. He tapped Finnigan’s nose. “I like the way you think, Finnigan!”

“I’m so clever,” Finnigan agreed.

Scorpius snapped his fingers. Albus looked to him at once. “What about that Irish Stew you made a few months ago? The one with the fake meat or whatever that was?”

Albus grinned. “Yes!” he leaned in and kissed Scorpius. “I forgot about that, thank you! That’ll be perfect! Seamus is even coming over tonight—topical!!”

“I…don’t think you should say that, Albus, but I guess I’m not an expert on Irish Relations…”

“Irish Stew! What do you think, Finnigan? Delilah?!”

Delilah looked to Finnigan, and after he’d mulled it over and gave a definitive nod, Delilah mimed his nodding. It was so adorable that Albus _had_ to sweep her up into his arms and kiss her again. She sat perched on his hip while he got most of the ingredients ready.

“They’re so cute, aren’t they, Finnigan?” he heard Scorpius whispered to Finnigan.

“They’re all right,” Finnigan shrugged.

There was a bit of commotion out in the garden as Seamus and Dean apparated in. Finnigan raced off to greet his grandparents, and Delilah squirmed in Albus’s arms while crying ‘ _De!!’_ so Scorpius walked the two outside to join the rest of their siblings in the garden. Albus missed the initial sound of the Floo sparking to life, so when he turned around to grab something from another drawer and found his sister’s face in the fireplace, he shrieked.

“You fucking baby,” Lily snorted.

Albus glowered. “Well, turning around to see _that face_ unexpectedly is like a _nightmare_ , Lulu.”

Their glares gave way to immediate smiles. It’d been at least two weeks since they’d talked to Lily; she’d been busy with a tiny dragon she called ‘Big Boy’ who’d she’d started keeping at her house at night. Something about ‘poachers’ and him being ‘exceptionally vulnerable’, but Albus knew she really just loved the dragon. She would’ve kept Opal in her house if he would’ve fit, without a doubt.  

“How is Finnigan? And the other Potter babies? How’s your little one? How’s Nora doing? Is James over his cold?” she asked.

“Finnigan is as cheeky as ever.”

“Oh, thank Merlin. I was worried you lot would stamp that out of him.”

“Never a chance—we couldn’t ever stamp it out of you, could we?”

“Ha, ha. You’re _hilarious_. Nora? Little baby? James?” she pressed.

Albus grabbed the knives he needed and charmed them to chop the onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes. He got the pot ready as he responded to his sister’s inquiries.

“Nora’s great! Beautiful and glowing—did she tell you she got a promotion at work? She’s showing now, too, you know! She says the baby has started moving a bit, but it’s very faint, and nobody can feel it from the outside yet! We’re finding out the sex this week. James is over his cold, if you can even call it that. He was being so dramatic,” Albus scoffed. “He made mum sleep here, Lily. Our adult brother. Our adult brother who has five kids. He made our _mummy_ sleep here because he had the sniffles.”

“I bet she loved that,” Lily snorted. “Bet she made him soup and pepper-up potions and doted over him and his family.”

“She did,” Albus affirmed. “But yeah, he’s doing fine now. How’s ‘Big Boy’?”

“Napping. In the fucking bed. Caden keeps letting him up on it—it’s a big problem,” Lily said, annoyed. “He curls up at the bottom but he’s still _massive_ and it’s the principle of the matter, y’know?. Caden’s so damn _soft…_ ” she shook her head.

“Well, I can’t say I see much sense in letting a fire-breathing dragon into the bed, so I can take your side.”

“The problem isn’t that he’s a fire-breathing dragon. It’s that it’s spoiling him! Big Boy, I mean! And it’s making him soft!”

“Well, you’re letting him live in a house with people, Lulu; I think that ship has already sailed.”

“It’s where he’s happiest,” Lily defended. “It’s all he’s ever known. There was never any chance of reintegrating him into the wild. Anyway, I was actually looking for Scorpius. Nobody was at your flat so I figured you two were here, paying your dues to Nora or whatever. Is he here?”

“Yeah, he’s out in the garden. Why?” Albus asked curiously.

“Because he poisoned me, that’s why!” she said, annoyed. “It’s been sixteen weeks and I _still_ feel like shit. This was supposed to get better after four! I can’t stand the taste of kiwi anymore, I keep getting sick, I’m tired all the time, and this morning I cried because the inside of my favorite mug has coffee stains! This has to end, Albus. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m glad that I helped you two and I don’t regret it, but I did _not_ agree to live the rest of my days in a perpetual state of early pregnancy when I’m not even pregnant. It’s unfair.”

Albus frowned. “I had no idea you were still feeling bad, Lily. Scorpius sent you potions last month _._ Did you take them?”

“Of course I did!! I’ve done _everything_ he’s said and more! I even went an extra _two months_ past his one-month instruction to use the barrier spell—can you believe it? Me! Using a barrier spell for three whole months! God, I felt like a teenager again. So I’ll have you know that I have gone _above and beyond_ to follow my Healer’s instructions!”

“Disgusting, Lily,” Albus said, his nose scrunched up in distaste. “I guess everything’s still…off-balance? I’ll go and get Scorpius so he can figure out a solution.”

“Please do. The dragons are feeding off my moodiness and it’s very dangerous for everybody involved. Ivan lost his eyebrows last week.”

“Er…yeah, I’ll get Scorpius right now,” Albus promised.

He sped out into the garden, expecting to find a cheerful and loving family gathering, but that was very far from the mark. He stopped a few feet from the doorway, his eyes on Seamus and Dean as they argued with Nora. She had a hand pressed to her small bump, and whatever Seamus and Dean were saying, she was not all right with it. Her eyes were narrowed. James was red in the face.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Scorpius hissed. He walked up to Albus quickly. “They got into an argument…not sure what started it… _incredibly awkward_ …”

“Well, it’s your lucky day,” Albus whispered back. “You get to escape. Lily’s at the Floo in the kitchen. Needs to talk to you. She’s _still_ feeling poorly.”

Scorpius frowned. “Seriously?! I really thought the last potion would help things. Oh no…I feel so bad…this never happened with the trial runs of the potion…”

“I’m sure you can figure out how to help her,” Albus reassured Scorpius.

Scorpius scampered off, leaving Albus to try and comfort his nieces and nephews, who were _horrified_ to see their Dean and Seamus yelling at Mummy and Daddy. After Henry and Delilah both burst into terrified tears, Albus had enough. With his protectiveness flaring, he marched right over to the bickering couples, Delilah on one hip and Henry on his other.

“You’re upsetting the kids!” he greeted, annoyed.

James’s and Nora’s faces fell. They both reached for their kids at once. Henry dove for James while Delilah reached for her mum. They kissed their kids’ heads.

“Oh, we’re so sorry, honey bears,” Nora cooed. “Everything’s okay. Everything’s fine.”

“Sounds like a lie…” Finnigan sang. Albus looked at him sharply. He shrugged.

“What’s wrong?” Evra asked her parents. She’d visibly paled. She looked between Seamus and her dad. “Why are you angry?”

James and Seamus exchanged a look. Seamus kneeled down and offered Evra a smile.

“We’re just worried about your mummy, is all,” Seamus admitted. Albus felt his heart sink. Seamus and Dean had, to his knowledge, already come around to the idea. He wondered if Nora had been lying to him all along to spare his feelings, to keep him from worrying.

“You don’t need to worry, Seamus,” Nora said firmly. “I’m fine. I’ve done this four other times. I know what I’m doing. I mean it. It’s _okay_.”

Seamus’s anger gave way to a wounded look. “I just feel like you never talk to us before making big decisions. You just…do them. We’re your dads. Or at least…I always thought I was. But you don’t ask me for advice or input. You tell us about major life decisions last, it seems. It is incredibly hurtful, Nora.”

Albus wished he could’ve disappeared. Nora’s face fell. It was clear that Seamus’s words had deeply injured her. James and Dean both reached out towards her, as if to comfort her, but she shifted Delilah in her arms and turned, heading wordlessly into the house. Albus, who felt indebted to Nora in ways he couldn’t even verbalize, was extremely bothered by this.

“It’s not all about you, you know,” he snapped at Seamus. James gave him a surprised look, but for once, he didn’t complain about Albus trying to protect Nora. “Your daughter’s doing something so selfless and amazing and she needs support, but instead you’re just…making it about you and your feelings. It’s no wonder she puts off telling you things.”

“Considering that _you’re_ the one she’s risking her life for, I think you probably shouldn’t weigh in,” Dean told him fairly.

Albus bristled. “She offered. It was her idea.”

“And you accepted,” Dean pointed out, his right eyebrow raised. He leaned over and lifted Finnigan. “C’mon, let’s go check on Mummy.”

“‘Kay,” Finnigan agreed. He looked over Dean’s shoulder at Seamus. “Don’t follow us unless you’ve got flowers for Mummy. You messed up, Seamus.”

Seamus sighed and pressed his hands o00ver his eyes. James drew Evra and Rory to his sides. He kissed both their heads.

“Girls, why don’t you go inside and get some water? We can play a bit later.”

Rory peered at James. “You just want to have an ‘adult conversation’,” she said wisely.

“Right you are, Clever Rory,” James relented. He smiled at her and stroked her blonde curls. “I’ll be inside soon, okay?”

Rory took Evra’s hand. “Okay,” the girls said. They took off obediently into the house. James shifted Henry and looked at Seamus. Albus crossed his arms. Seamus already appeared apologetic.

“I won’t speak for Nora. Her relationship with you is her business. But she’s got nothing but love for you, Seamus. She never does things to hurt you. If it ever feels like she’s ‘excluding’ you and Dean, it’s because you both can be a bit…suffocating. You worry so much about her and she doesn’t like to cause you stress. But Albus is right…it’s not fair for you two to cause _her_ so much stress. I know that you’re both going through…whatever it is you’re going through. Albus and I have been there with our own parents—our mum bought her own motorbike!! But you need to…I don’t know, find a way to talk through it.”

Seamus rubbed his face wearily. “I know. I guess I just…I’ve been feeling…never mind. It’s just difficult sometimes. To be a parent but not be one.”

“That’s all in your head, mate,” James said gently. “You’re a parent in every single way. Nora has never considered you any different. Why are you suddenly feeling like this now?”

Seamus shrugged. “I guess all this with Rory’s adoption has just really made me regret not legally adopting Nora. I cared too much what people thought about me. My religious family—what they thought about me and Dean. I wish I’d never let that get in the way of my life.”

For the first time, Albus realized he and Seamus had a bit in common. He wondered if he’d feel like this one day—like his bond with his child was lesser because he wasn’t technically its biological parent. Worse—he wondered if his _child_ would feel like that one day. He wondered if he or she would love him less because of it. With a weighty heart, he watched as Seamus’s eyes grew damp. Seamus fought the tears back bravely.

“I get that,” James told him seriously. “But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a bit of a parchment. You raised her, Seamus. You and Dean are the only parents she’s ever known. Genes don’t matter. You know that better than anybody.”

Albus hadn’t expected Nora to return to the garden so soon, much less with tears on her face. She approached them and threw her arms around her dad. Seamus hugged her back tightly. Albus felt his throat narrow. She leaned back and looked up at her dad. “Let’s go on a walk and talk, yeah?”  

Seamus laughed weakly. He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“We’ll be back by dinner,” she told James.

“Take as long as you need—we’ve got the kids under control,” James said, gesturing between himself and Albus. Nora nodded.

James looked down at Albus once Nora and Seamus left through the back gate.

“Don’t even think like that,” James said, without Albus even having to say a word. “Let me tell you the things that matter: being there every day to encourage them and comfort them. Showing them that they can trust you no matter what, without reservation, and never betraying that trust. Laughing with them and teaching them. You know what doesn’t matter, in the end? Whose sperm created them. And you know what else?”

“What?” Albus muttered.

“You’re going to be a great dad. I would know.” 

Albus smiled. He couldn’t deny that this experience was making him and his siblings so much closer, and in moments like this, that closeness was on full display. Albus never would’ve told James, out of fear of being teased for the rest of his life, but it meant more than he could say to have _James_ tell him that he’d be a good father. He thought his brother was a perfect dad, and if he could even be half as good as he was, he’d be happy.

“Thanks, James,” he said. “And you’re going to make a great uncle.”

James beamed. “Finally! I get to be an _uncle_. I’m so excited.”

“I know,” Albus laughed. “The ‘world’s best uncle’ shirt you already bought yourself communicated that quite clearly.”

“Yeah...Uncle Ron was a bit offended by that…wants me to change it to world’s _second-best_ uncle.”

Albus snorted. “C’mon, let’s see if Lulu’s still at the Floo. Did you know Caden’s letting Big Boy sleep in their bed?”

“ _Merlin_ ,” James said. “He’s got two dragons in the bed every night?! He should’ve been a Gryffindor…fearless.”

Albus laughed at once. “Yeah, and she’s apparently still very much a moody dragon. I think a Potter family holiday is in order once she’s back to normal.”

“It’ll be a miracle, that’s for sure,” James agreed. He slung an arm over Albus’s shoulders. “Let’s go get dinner ready and the kids cleaned up so Nora and Seamus are impressed by our Potter fathering skills.”

Albus rolled his eyes, but he was laughing along with James as they headed into the house.

* * *

 

“All right, great, thank _you_ ,” Ginny said, after taking ten galleons from Roxanne. She looked down at her parchment. “Okay, that’s…ten total bets for a boy, four for a girl. What the hell do you people have against daughters?!”

“The Malfoy line is mostly male births,” Rose said, defending her betting decision. “Odds are it’ll be a boy.”

“I don’t know…I feel like it’s a girl,” Nora admitted, her hands resting on her belly. “I haven’t been wrong yet. Well, once. But I’m still at 75% accuracy.”

“Do you want to place a bet?” Ginny asked hopefully.

“No—feels wrong,” Nora denied.

Ginny looked at Albus next. Albus looked to Scorpius. They exchanged an uncertain look. Was betting wrong? Probably. They probably shouldn’t.

“We’re not betting,” Albus decided. He looked back at his mum. She sighed. Uncle George swore underneath his breath. “We don’t care either way. We just—”

“‘Want it to be healthy’,” Lily echoed, her voice echoing from Harry’s pocket phone. He’d made it so that everybody could hear her. “You’ve said that a _million_ times, Al.”

“Well, it’s true,” he said defensively.

“Liar. You both have a preference, only you won’t say it because you don’t want people to think you love your kid less if it’s not what you said you wanted,” she said.

She was right, of course, but Albus wouldn’t dare say it. He wanted a daughter, but he was afraid to say that out loud, in case he had a son and one day somebody told him that Albus had wanted a girl all along. He’d never want his child to feel unwanted. He hadn’t even mentioned that to Scorpius, because he was worried _Scorpius_ wanted a boy, and he didn’t want Scorpius’s joy to be hindered by worries that Albus was disappointed.

“I think it’s a girl, too,” Iset admitted.

“Yes! Will you bet?!” Ginny asked.

“Are you okay if I do?” Iset directed the question to Albus and Scorpius. Albus shrugged. Scorpius smiled.

“Sure, go on. We just don’t want to bet,” he explained.

“Put me down for a girl, too,” Lily finally decided. “I know technically the male side decides the sex, but I don’t know. It’s my egg. Seems like it’d be a girl.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Harry admitted to Lily. “But Rose is right…odds are definitely in favor of a boy.”

“We shouldn’t be betting at all,” Aunt Hermione said, right as Ron threw down a hundred galleons for a girl, clearly persuaded by Lily’s faulty reasoning. At his wife’s words, he slowly reached forward and gathered his coins, pulling them back over to himself. Hermione gave him a stern look. “What if the baby finds out about this one day and feels unwanted?”

It was exactly what Albus had been thinking, but he didn’t want to deprive his family of a chance to bet. The odds of his child finding out were slim, and anyway, they were betting on what they _thought_ it’d be, not what they _wanted_ it to be.

“Draco?” Ginny asked. “Last chance to weigh in!”

Draco remained resolute. “I don’t care either way and I will not bet.”

“Oh, fine,” Ginny sighed. She leaned over the pocket phone and yelled into it, much louder than was necessary. “IS—CADEN—THERE?”

“Fuck, Mum, you don’t have to yell!! Ouch!” Lily complained. “He’s in the garden but I bet he bloody heard you all the way from—yep, here he comes. Caden, my mum wants to know if you want to bet on the sex of Albus and Scorpius’s baby.”

“Sure. What’d you bet?”

“A girl.”

“Ginny, put twenty down for a boy.”

Albus snickered. They all ignored the sounds of the couple’s ensuing flirty fight. Albus was beginning to feel nervous.

“Okay, can we do this now?” he asked Scorpius.

Scorpius grinned. He looked down at Nora, who’d been relaxing on the examining table for a while now, just waiting for Scorpius to do the scanning spell. “I’m ready whenever Nora is! Nora, you ready?”

“Yes,” she told him. She rubbed her baby bump and leaned over it. “Don’t make Auntie Nora look like a liar, love, be a girl…”

Scorpius leaned over her stomach and whispered: “Be whatever you want to be, darling.”

“Girls have more fun…” Nora countered.

“That’s not even true,” Aunt Hermione muttered from the other side of the room. “Women put up with so much—”

“Aunt Hermione, don’t depress the baby! What if it is a girl?!” James interrupted.

“He’s got a point,” Ron told Hermione. “Don’t give the baby something to worry about for the rest of its time cooped up in the womb…not good for it…you always say anxiety causes health problems, Hermione…”

Hermione shook her head in disbelief. “And to think you’re both fathers. It _doesn’t_ work like that.”

Albus wasn’t taking the chance. He sat on the edge of Nora’s examining table and leaned over so he could whisper his own fatherly advice.

“Ignore your family,” he whispered. “They’re all mad. Except for Daddy and Papa and Auntie Nora.”

“Oi! And _Uncle Jamie_! Uncle _Jamie_!” James insisted.

“And Auntie Lulu!” Lily added, affronted. “I’m the wisest of all, Baby, and _I_ am _extremely_ badass and I probably gave you _great_ hair!”

“Can we…do this? Not to interrupt your harassment of my grandchild, but I really want to know,” Draco admitted.

“I agree with Draco,” Harry said. He nodded. “Nora? You ready?”

She patted her stomach. “Yes. More than ready.”

Scorpius held his wand over the fabric of her shirt. He murmured a complicated incantation. A second later, a hazy image unfurled from the tip of his wand like smoke. It grew and grew, spreading out above Nora’s stomach, until it had solidified into what looked a lot like a large oval photo frame. They waited as the image of the baby formed inside the frame. It took a full minute, and then…

“Awwww,” the room chorused. Albus felt his heart jump. He leaned in closer, his heart thudding, his lips stretching up into a grin. Scorpius made an odd squeaking sound; he couldn’t jump up and down in excitement because it’d ruin the image, but he clearly wanted to. The image was still a bit hazy, and the baby wasn’t all the way formed, but there it was—their baby. Albus could see its little head, its little limbs, and even some of its facial features.

“My baby’s nose is _beautiful_ ,” he heard himself say, an extreme level of pride in his voice.

“Is it my nose?! I want to see! Put me on the thingy! The thingy where I can see!” Lily demanded.

“Scorpius, the baby’s mouth looks like yours a bit, don’t you think?” Draco asked, his voice shaking with excitement.

“Maybe…!” Scorpius beamed.

“Oh,” they heard Lily say. Albus glanced around; Harry was holding the phone up, so Lily could see the image. “Er…I’m sure it’ll be really cute once it’s born, but it looks really frightening right now, not going to lie to you.”

“Lily!” Ginny and Hermione scolded.

“What?! The limbs are creepy—like a skeleton! And its head is massive! But I’m sure it’ll be really cute once it’s done baking!”

“She’s beautiful,” Scorpius gushed, indifferent to Lily’s critique.

It took them all a minute to process his slip-up. Albus’s heart skipped a few more beats. “She?”

“It’s a girl?!”

“ _Nice_ ,” Lily appreciated.

“Damn!! I bet for a boy!” Uncle George grumbled.

There was the sound of rustling pages. Rose sounded distressed. “All these charts indicated it’d be a boy!!”

Scorpius glanced at Albus. His eyes were shining behind a film of tears. “A girl. A daughter, Albus.”

Albus’s eyes burned. The vision of his unborn daughter grew hazy. “That’s what I wanted,” he admitted thickly.

“Me too!” Scorpius confessed. They shared a grin.

“I _knew it,_ ” Nora muttered proudly. She patted over her tummy happily. “Nicely done, little one. Jamie, we’ve got a _niece_!”

“Yes!!” James celebrated. “Delilah’s going to have a girl cousin near her age!!”

“Well, there you go, Draco,” Albus said. He blinked past the tears forming in his eyes; he wasn’t even embarrassed as a few slipped past his eyelashes. “You can pick the name now.”

They’d decided a few weeks ago to let Draco name their baby. Scorpius wanted to share this experience with Draco in full, and considering Draco wasn’t really that close with Nora (so he didn’t get an idea of the day-to-day progress and growth of his grandchild), it seemed a great way to give him something to focus on and plan for during the pregnancy. Albus was okay with it on the condition that they could request a ‘second choice’ if it was too awful. He didn’t want his poor baby to end up in a situation like, well, his.

“I’ve got a few suggestions—”

Draco interrupted Harry before he could finish. “Not a chance, old man. You’ve had your go. It was…interesting.”

“Hey…”

Draco was certain. He smiled at the image of his granddaughter and looked to Albus and Scorpius. “Lyra.”

Albus exchanged a surprised looked with Scorpius. They both looked back at their father-in-law. He seemed so proud of his selection that Albus almost chickened out of protesting, but this was his _child._ She’d live with that name for her entire life.

“Er, you can’t use ‘Lyra’,” Albus finally told Draco, in what he hoped was a gentle tone. “Professor Gantha predicted that. Remember? When the dementors swarmed Hogwarts in our fifth year?”

“So?” Draco challenged.

“So…it’s sort of a cop out, right? I don’t know, it just seems…” Albus trailed off. He looked to Scorpius for help.

“Do you really like that name, Dad? Or did you just pick it because of Gantha?” Scorpius wondered.

Draco scoffed. “This has nothing to do with ‘divination’.” He closed the word in finger-quotes. Hermione nodded from behind him, pleased by his dismissal of the subject. “That’s what we were going to use if you were a girl, Scorpius. Your mum picked it out…she loved it.”

That was enough for Scorpius. Albus didn’t even have to look at him to know that one fact had won him over.

“Also,” Draco said, a bit sheepishly. “It’s a nice tribute. To those who made all of this possible. Lily and Nora.”

“Soppy…” Lily sang, but her voice was suspiciously thick.

“Awww,” Nora said, touched. “L-Y for L-I- _L-Y_ , R-A for N-O- _R-A_. That’s sweet, Draco.”

It was a bit too sweet. Scorpius started crying. And Albus, overcome with emotion, couldn’t do anything but pat his back, for fear of becoming emotional himself.

“Is that okay with you, Albus?” Draco asked. “If it’s not, I also like Serpens.”

“ _Oh, God,”_ Albus’s mum hissed underneath her breath, horrified.

“Really? You like that?” Lily challenged skeptically. “Because Mum and Dad’s suggestion of ‘Astoria Rose’ is _way_ better than ‘Serpens’, and their idea was…” Lily laughed. “I don’t even have to insult it, it speaks for itself.”

Albus definitely agreed that ‘Lyra’ was loads better than the alternatives. He hadn’t even considered it before—somehow, having it prophesized had made it seem off-limits to him—but now that he ran it through his mind, he found he liked it.

“Er…no! No, Lyra’s great, Draco,” Albus said quickly, horrified by the idea of naming his poor daughter _Serpens._ “I love it. Lyra it is. Lyra Potter-Malfoy.”

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Albus was abruptly pulled from his dreams by the sound of Scorpius gasping.

He blinked tiredly at his husband through the darkness, confused and concerned. “Scorpius? What’s wrong?”

He could barely make out his husband’s expression, but he could sense his uneasiness. Albus reached across the bed and set his palm on his chest; he’d been sweating so much that he’d nearly soaked his pajama top. Albus undid the buttons while Scorpius caught his breath.

“You know the—bottles?” Scorpius asked, his voice shaky.

“What? What bottles?” Albus asked, troubled. He pushed Scorpius’s damp pajama top off him. He rolled over momentarily, grabbed his wand, and then turned back over onto his side to face Scorpius, so he could send cool mist on Scorpius’s burning skin. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“No. No,” Scorpius said urgently. “Al—I think I’ve been seeing the future in my dreams.”

Albus sat up. “ _Lumos_ ,” he murmured. He shone his light onto Scorpius. His husband looked serious and shaken. Albus furrowed his brow. “Seriously? For how long? What sort of stuff?”

Scorpius ran a trembling hand through his hair. “You know when we were teenagers? And I kept having those dreams about the glass bottles or—or—vials or—whatever?”

It took Albus a moment. “The ones without tops?”

“Yes! Yes. I keep…I keep having those again, but I’m seeing more things, every night almost, that’s why I invited Gantha over for tea, but I was too afraid to tell her what’s happening, it’s frightening and…” he trailed off. He met Albus’s eyes in the dim light. “Albus, I think those bottles are the key to solving lime pox. Whatever they are, whatever they contain…I think they’re really, really important.”

It was possible that Scorpius was delirious and still half-asleep, but something in his intent stare made Albus believe him. He curled up to his still-damp chest and kissed his throat.

“Okay. Tomorrow, we’ll invite her over again, and this time we’ll tell her everything, okay? Let’s go back to sleep. We can’t do anything about it tonight.”

“There were…there was our daughter, Lyra, and we were fruit picking in France, and there were twins there, and James and Nora and their family and they had another baby too and my dad and your parents and…and…and then I was…I was standing in a room and…all those glass bottles, tiny, every color of the rainbow, I put lids on all of them except the green ones, and…and…” Scorpius trailed off anxiously. “I can’t remember. It goes away so quickly.”

To Albus, it sounded like a regular dream. Nothing in it seemed particularly alarming. It actually sounded rather nice. So why had Scorpius roused in such a fright?

“Did anything bad happen?” Albus asked gently.

“No, I just…I felt so…when I was in the room with the bottles, I knew it was so important, and I was afraid of messing it up, and…I can’t remember anything else.”

Albus was growing a bit skeptical. From what he’d heard, there was nothing to distinguish the dream from a regular anxiety dream, nothing to indicate that it was really a glimpse into the future. He kissed Scorpius again. “We’ll talk to Gantha. Don’t worry, okay?”

“Okay…” Scorpius said uneasily.

“That sounds like worrying,” Albus said.

“Sorry. I’m just stressed. Things are better, you know—fewer people are buying poached items, people are mostly getting tested before procreating, people are abandoning their children less—but did you hear Hermione yesterday? The new testing data puts the percentage of our population with lime pox at _eighty-five percent._ If we don’t fix it, our little Lyra won’t have any friends, Albus! She’ll have nobody! She’ll go to Hogwarts and she’ll be the only one in her classes and it’ll be so lonely and she’ll feel so alone and—”

Albus broke off his rambling with another kiss. “It’s _okay_ ,” he reiterated. “It’s going to be fine, Scorpius. If you’re seeing the key to solving lime pox, we’ll get Gantha’s help to decode it. If not, somebody will find a cure. It’s only a matter of time, okay? C’mon, we need to go to sleep. We’ve got long work days and then we’ve got baby class.”

“Right,” Scorpius said. He took a shuddering breath. “We’re doing infant first aid lessons at tonight’s class.”

“Right,” Albus soothed. “You’ll love it; Muggle first aid methods are your favorite.”

“Yeah…yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Al. I love you.”

“I love you, too. It’ll be okay. Lyra will be okay. She’ll have friends, even if we’ve got to move to another country, all right?”

“Okay,” he said. He rolled over to settle back to sleep. Albus curled around his body and kissed the back of his neck. Albus had just drifted off again when Scorpius said: “Can it be France?”

“Yes, Scorpius. It can be France.”

“Okay,” Scorpius said, relieved. Albus headed back towards sleep…only to have Scorpius speak again. “Or we could go to New Zealand since we’ve already got family there.”

“Sure, Scorp. France or New Zealand. Night.”

“Goodnight. Or somewhere in South America. Castelobruxo has an incredible Herbology program.”

“Nice. We’ll make a list in the morning,” Albus yawned. “Okay. Seriously. Night.”

“Goodnight…” Two seconds later: “I guess, if it came to it, the Americans aren’t having a big problem with lime pox because MUCUSA’s so violently preemptive, so we could—”

Albus threw himself over Scorpius’s and pressed his palm to his lips. Scorpius stared at him, wide-eyed.

“So no to that location?” Scorpius mumbled into Albus’s palm.

“I need sleep; I’ve got an investigation going on, remember?” Albus reminded him. A beat. “And yeah. A firm ‘no’ to that last location. I thought you were joking...Merlin, were you _serious_?”

Scorpius huffed. “I _was_ , that’s what’s scary, Albus! I was very serious! I’m so worried about Lyra’s future.”

“Me too,” Albus admitted. “I don’t want her to be alone. But she’s in the same boat as our nieces and nephews, right? We’ll all figure it out together. I’m going to sleep now, okay? I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He’d never been more thankful for family. Especially now, as he grew closer and closer to having his own family, he was reminded of what an irreplaceable support system they were. Every one of them, from his hilariously flawed yet loving parents, his ridiculous—yet kindhearted—brother, his annoying—yet fiercely loyal—sister, his generous and pure-hearted sister-in-law, his bright nieces and nephews, his steady father-in-law, his funny and supportive aunts and uncles, his gran and grandad. He felt blessed to bring his child into a world where she’d have them. So he wasn’t really that worried at all. Lyra might have fewer peers, but she’d have more than enough family to make up for it. And most importantly, she’d have him and Scorpius. They didn’t need to worry about Lyra feeling alone, because they both knew all about that. They’d felt that keenly in their teenage years, and there was no way, no matter the circumstances, that they’d ever let their daughter feel that way. He knew that for certain.


	12. II. New Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Nora confront the reality of having a non-magical child. Albus and Scorpius try to limit their hovering. Finnigan learns that not everyone is a great fit for the muggle educational system. And Lily is still feeling unwell.

“I think I have a _grey hair_!”

James leaned in so close to the mirror that his nose pressed against the glass. His heart picked up pace at once; anxiety crawled up his spine. _Was_ that grey?! Or was the light hitting his hair strangely?!

“What? Jamie, come here! Come here, baby, you don’t have a _grey_ ,” his wife scoffed.

James backed up from the mirror and hurried over to his wife’s sink. He leaned over so the top of his head was level with her eyes. His chest felt tight.

“I think I do! Already! I’m going to die young, Nora! I’m going to leave you and all our babies! Oh, Merlin, who is going to take care of my family if I die?! We have to do our will! Today! Right now! Right this very _moment_! Oh no, oh no, oh no...”

James felt a brief and sharp pain along his scalp. There was a brief pause.

“Jamie.”

He straightened and met his wife’s eyes. Nora was giving him one of her _I’m amused but I’ll keep that to myself until you feel better_ looks, with her eyes soft and full of sympathy but the corners of her mouth twitching against withheld laughter. She held up the plucked grey hair.

“It’s paint, love.”

James hardly dared to believe her. He was already sinking into anxiety over his upcoming death. “What?! Do you promise?!”

“Yes. I promise. The way the light was hitting it just made it look grey. Watch.”

James leaned in as she scraped her nails along the plucked hair. The “grey” fell off in flakes of dried paint that drifted slowly to the bathroom floor. James relaxed and let out a relieved sigh. He pressed a hand over his heart.

“Oh, thank Merlin. I’m not ready to die. I’m not ready to leave you.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere,” she reassured him. She leaned into his chest; James wrapped her up in his embrace (as best as he could with her massive belly) and pressed his face into her hair. He’d forgotten she was in the process of pulling conditioner through it and was greeted by a face-full of vanilla hair product. Too stubborn to let up their hug, he elected to ignore it.

“Jamie baby?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got conditioner in my hair.”

“Yes, I realize that now.”

He tightened his arms around her and let out a relieved sigh. Hugging her always felt so nice, like somebody had popped the balloon of anxiousness inside his chest. All his worries gradually deflated. All that was left was reassurance and love.

“You’re not going to die anytime soon,” she continued.

“How do you know?”

“Because I would fight Death with my bare fists,” she responded. She sounded quite casual and innocent for a pregnant woman declaring a fistfight with Death itself. James couldn’t help but laugh. He leaned back, wiped his face on his shirt sleeve, and then kissed her. They were in the middle of that same kiss when the door opened. James peeked over Nora’s shoulder and saw Rory, Henry, and Finnigan in the doorway. It was very early; the others must’ve still been asleep. He and Nora broke apart and greeted their children with hugs and kisses. James struggled to hold both Finnigan and Henry at once while Nora sat Rory on the counter to fuss with her hair. Henry yawned tiredly and nestled his face into James’s neck; going by his exhaustion, one of the other kids had woken him before he was ready.

“You’re all smiles today, Rory Girl,” James commented. He smiled back at their sunny daughter, who was beaming patiently as Nora drew a bright yellow brush through her hair. He crossed over and kissed her cheek. “Excited for school?”

She squirmed excitedly. “There was a _mouse_ in our class on Friday!!”

James had to scrounge very deeply to find an excited smile to give Rory. Privately, he was horrified. He shot Nora a quick look. She shot one back. _Later_ , he read in her expression. He nodded and looked back at Rory.

“Wow! That’s…wow! Er…are they getting rid of it?”

Rory’s face fell. “I _hope not_!”

James looked down at Finnigan. “Finnigan, did you see the mouse?”

He groaned. Apparently, this was a touchy topic. “I was _asleep_! It ran over Lotta while she was napping!! I’m so _jealous_!”

“Me too! I’m jealous, too!” Rory said sadly.

James and Nora exchanged another look. James had no idea the muggles let mice run around in their classrooms. He was starting to rethink muggle school. They’d only put their older three in it because they knew they needed to enroll Rory so she could get socialization and education, as James was still trying to convince the Ministry to instate a Squib program at Hogwarts but wasn’t sure if he’d _ever_ be successful, and if he wasn’t, Rory would have to go to muggle school while the others went to Hogwarts, and he didn’t want it to be a brand new concept on top of the trauma of being sent somewhere different than her siblings. It had seemed easier and kinder to just send all the kids to muggle school together, at least until it was time for them to go to Hogwarts. And it had worked out very well so far. Rory and Finnigan were both in the same reception class, and while they sometimes didn’t get along at home, Finnigan stepped up magnificently as an ‘elder brother’ and helped Rory settle in (even if Rory was technically a bit older than him, having turned five a few days prior in late December, while Finnigan would still be four until April.) Vic and Teddy had decided to try Remus out there, too, and Evra and Remus were adjusting exceptionally well in their class. Henry and Delilah were still too young to go and were having a great time being doted on with one-on-one attention every day. However, James's opinion of the school was greatly lessened by the knowledge that there were rodents running around freely.

“There you go,” Nora said with a smile. She kissed Rory’s forehead and helped her down from the sink. Rory’s hair was plaited just the way she liked it. “I’ve got to shower very quickly, and then I’ll be downstairs, okay?”

Rory nodded. James set Finnigan and Henry down and gave them gentle pushes towards the door.

“Go pick the toys you want to take to school for naptime! I’ll be there in one moment and we’ll start breakfast. Don’t wake up Evra or Delilah, okay?”

“Okay,” Finnigan said. “I’ve got this, Daddy.”

“Great. Thanks, Finnigan.”

As soon as the kids had scampered off, James turned to Nora.

“ _Mice_!”

“Oh, I know,” she worried. She pulled her fingers through her hair and bit her lip. “I’m sure it’s just the one…I’m sure it just crept in…it’s probably gone by now…the school  _looked_ very clean…didn’t you think? It looked clean?”

James shook his head, dismayed. “The poor muggles. How are they meant to keep rodents out without magic? How do they _do it_?” Something horrible occurred to him. He took his wife’s shoulders gently in his hands. “Do you think…there are _spiders_ in the building?”

“There are spiders in every building. There was one in the kitchen last week.”

James clapped his hands over his ears. “Oh, don’t tell me that!! I don’t want to know that!! I’ll never be able to go into the kitchen at night again!!” After he was sure his wife wouldn’t ruin his innocence over whatever spiders might be lurking, he lowered his hands. “I’m not sure I like this. The school thing.”

“I know. You cried every time we dropped them off for two weeks,” Nora reminded him gently.

“You did, too!”

“Yeah…but…” she pointed at her pregnant belly. They both knew she would’ve cried anyway, but James let her have that. James sagged against the counter and dragged his hands through his hair.

“Oh, I thought I was ready for it, but I hate it. Them being away all day. And it’s got me thinking about Hogwarts…Nora, Evra’s going to be _seven_ in June. _Seven_! Four years from going away to Hogwarts! From leaving us for  _months_! Months we won’t see her! Oh, I’m freaking out. Can you tell? Can you tell I’m freaking out? I hide it well, but inside, I’m constantly screaming! Ha! Oh, Merlin, I can’t do this…” he buried his face in his hands.

“Oh, God, I know,” she groaned. She crossed her arms uneasily. “I’ve been panicking, too. I don’t know how our parents did it.”

“Maybe we could get jobs at Hogwarts and live there with our younger babies, too,” James suggested. He’d been thinking about that possibility a lot. “You could teach Arithmancy or Runes and I could go for Transfiguration!”

“You love your job,” Nora said, aghast. “And frankly, nobody could do it even half as well as you do.”

“Oh, I know! I’d do both!” he said happily.

“So…you’ll head a department, help raise our five children, _and_ teach a full load of Transfiguration classes?”

“Yep! It’ll be just like our seventh year! Let’s be honest: you, Evvie, and I basically raised some of those younger students, and I didn’t exactly have a lot of spare time…or any.”

“Not much of any,” Nora agreed. She frowned. She smoothed the front of his pajama shirt. “I don’t want you to not have any spare time. I like having time with you. Think of how much the babies would miss you.”

His heart sank at once. “They would. They would miss me. They’d miss their dad.”

“So much. We can’t do that.”

“No. We’ll just have to use these four years to find another alternative.”

Nora leaned in and kissed him. “Deal.” She shot a look back at the door. James grinned stupidly as she casually walked over and kicked it shut. “We should wash the paint from your hair.”

“I can’t drop our children off looking dirty,” James agreed. He swept her up into his arms and pressed kisses over her face. Her laughter thawed his remaining anxiety over the future. “If we’re lucky, we’ll have five whole minutes before a kid bursts in here.”

She reached up and fanned her face. “Oh, Jamie, you know just what to say to get a girl excited.”

They had precisely _four minutes_. Luckily, they weren’t new to this; Nora rinsed her hair, helped James wash his, they washed their bodies, _and_ they had time for some slippery snogging underneath the shower spray before the sound of multiple footsteps entered the room.

“Mummy!! Daddy!” Evra called.

“MUMMY!!!” Finnigan shouted. He sounded outraged to the point of tears.

James pulled the glass door of the shower back and stuck his head out. He wiped the water from his eyes.

“Yes?” he asked.

Evra walked up and peered seriously at him. “Daddy. Do mice have souls?”

“I—wha—…”

Nora stuck her head out above James’s. “Why are you asking that, darling?”

Evra reached over and set a consoling hand atop Finnigan’s curls. “Because they _definitely_ killed that classroom mouse.”

* * *

 

When James and Delilah returned from walking Padfoot, the kids were  _still_ on the topic of mice. 

“Did _not_! They did _not, did not, did not_!” Finnigan raged.

"They  _do_!" Evra reiterated. 

James pushed the pram over into the tiny alcove they kept it in, pulled Delilah out, and then fastened her into her highchair for breakfast. Once he undid Padfoot's lead, the dog trotted happily around the table, kissing each kid's face in turn, until finally curling up beneath Finnigan's chair, where he knew he had the best chance of getting breakfast scraps passed down to him. 

“I bet they kept the mouse for a pet!” Rory said excitedly.

“I want one!” Henry complained. “Mama?”

“No, love,” Nora said softly. She leaned over the back of Henry’s chair and kissed him. “Sorry, but no to a pet mouse.”

“Oh,” Henry said sadly. His little face fell. Right as James was about to explain why wild-caught mice weren’t the best pets, Evra said:

“Amber had a mouse in her house and they had to catch it in traps. She brought it to school to show us.”

Nora recoiled in horror, her hand pressing over her heart. “The dead mouse?!”

“No, Mummy, the trap!”

“Oh. Oh, thank God…”

“That’s what muggles do,” Evra persisted. "They catch the mice and kill them." She reached over to hug Finnigan consolingly, but he cringed away and glared at her. “I’m sorry, Finnigan.”

“I don’t even _believe you_ ,” he said. His brown eyes looked suspiciously moist. James didn’t give his sadness a chance to make him cry; he lifted him up into his arms at once and kissed his head. He rubbed his back comfortingly.

“We don’t know that for sure, Finnigan. I’ll talk to your teacher when I drop you off, okay?”

Finnigan sniffed. “If they caught it but it's still alive can we keep it as a pet forever?”

 _Oh, Merlin_. James looked up at the ceiling, pained. He knew what he wanted to say— _absolutely not_ —but he couldn’t tell his son that. He glanced at Nora. She seemed equally miserable.

“We’ll…talk about it, how about that?” James said.

“Okay,” Finnigan answered.

James helped Nora with breakfast. It took longer than it usually did because Delilah had decided the highchair was unacceptable; she kept trying to squirm out to sit with her siblings. James finally relented and let her toddle around while they dished out breakfast, but that proved to be its own form of distraction because she kept toddling underfoot and tripping her parents up. Finally, ten minutes before they needed to be out of the house, the kids were just beginning their breakfast.

“All right,” Nora said, checking her wristwatch. “Looks like we’ll have a couple minutes to sit and eat breakfast with the kids—”

“Hello! It’s me!” Scorpius called, from just outside the garden door. James hadn’t heard him apparating in, but then again, it’d been chaos in the kitchen. He stepped towards the door to let his brother-in-law inside, but to his surprise, his wife had ducked, so that the breakfast bar was shielding her from view. James hesitated.

“Er…Nora?” he asked.

She sighed. She had her hands pressed to her thighs; kneeling appeared very difficult, which wasn’t surprising, given her bulbous stomach.

“I know, I know it’s terrible, but…can you tell him I’m…I dunno, showering or…already at work? I love your brothers, I do, but I can’t take _the question_ anymore. Not after last night.”

Albus and Scorpius had been over for dinner last night (Albus _still_ insisted on cooking for them, not that James was complaining), and it’d been all right…except for the fact that, the further along Nora got, the more anxious the fathers-to-be became. They asked Nora if she was “all right” at least thirty times last night (James had counted). He never thought he’d be out-concerned, but for once, he seemed to be the _least_ anxious one. In all fairness, though, he’d been through pregnancies four times; he’d been just as anxious when it was Evra Nora was carrying.

“Okay,” James whispered. “I’ll cover you.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved. “Tell him I’ll stop by the flat tonight. I just need a couple hours free from _the question_ or I’ll probably start sobbing out of frustration and that will only lead to _more questions_.”

While Nora hurried from the kitchen to hide, James stepped into the garden to greet his brother-in-law. He was clearly on his way to work; he was in his green Healing robes and had his briefcase. He _also_ had a wrapped gift in his other hand. Oh boy.

“Morning, Scorpius!” James said. “To what do we owe the…early…pleasure?!”

Scorpius beamed. “Good morning! I know you’re busy rushing the kids off and I won’t keep you, but I wanted to drop this by—I know Nora’s legs have been cramping so I put in some potion to apply and some foods rich in potassium and some chocolate because, well, let’s be honest: when does chocolate ever hurt?”

James smiled. “Oh! Oh, well, that’s great! There was no need for Nora to go and h—to…er…go and …take…muggle…pain killers!”

Scorpius’s smile vanished. “Oh, no. Muggle painkillers?” he approached the house. “Is she okay? She should’ve Flooed if she wasn’t feeling well—”

“No, no, Healer Malfoy, she’s fine! Pshh! Better than fine! She’s…she’s…” _Why am I such a rubbish liar?_ “She’s a radiant, beautiful, otherworldly, delicate yet strong, magical, clever, warm, kindhearted, generous, creative, witty, romantic, optimistic—”

“Are you okay, James?” Scorpius interrupted.

“—stunningly perfect, and _healthy_ lady! No need to worry!” James finished. He smiled tightly. The blood leeched from Scorpius’s face, and the effect with his white-blond hair was not a good one.

“Oh, oh no…she’s…she’s…did she…has she lost the…”

Scorpius’s horror was so tangible that James himself felt a flash of panic and sadness. He couldn’t do it anymore.

“No! No, Scorpius, the baby is fine. She was kicking hard this morning and everything.” He sighed. “Look. Nora needs a break.”

Scorpius looked confused. “A break? From work?”

“No…a break from the…well…” James gestured at Scorpius’s wrapped gift. “The constant checking in and such. I mean, it’s not that we’re not grateful that you and Al are so involved…we really wanted that and your level of involvement has helped us keep all of this in perspective and it’s why it’s worked out so well. But can you imagine how emotionally exhausting it’d be to be asked thirty times in one meal if you’re ‘okay?’ And, you know, sometimes she’s not okay. Sometimes she’s had an awful day at work and the kids are being naughty and her back’s hurting and she’s tired and…you know, sometimes people just have bad days. The problem is, she never feels like she can answer the question ‘are you okay’ with anything other than ‘yes’, because she knows you and Albus will read into that and worry that she’s having regrets, so she’s got to continuously say ‘yes, I’m okay’, over and over, on days when she’s _not_ okay, and…I’m sure you can get how exhausting that can be.”

Scorpius looked positively stricken. “I do. I do know how exhausting that is. I’m so, so, so, so sorry. I had no idea! We weren’t trying to…micromanage her emotions. From now on, we’ll just come over for dinner and there will be no other visits unless there’s an emergency.”

“No, Scorpius, you and Albus are our family. You can come over whenever you like. Just…give her a bit of space, yeah? She’d never word it like that, because she adores you and Albus and she doesn’t want to run you off or make you feel unloved, but she needs space. She’s really okay, but this is a lot…she’s got a lot going on, you know? If something’s wrong, you’ll know, I _promise_.”

Scorpius nodded at once. He kept on nodding for an awkward amount of time. James was sure his neck was hurting. “Absolutely. But can I still say ‘how are you?’ when I see her?”

James laughed, bewildered. “Yeah, Scorpius. Just ease up on the hovering…I do enough of that, I don’t think she can take any more…”

“You _are_ really good at taking care of her and your family,” Scorpius nodded.

James beamed. He felt his heart warm. “Aw, thanks, mate! I think you just _Scorpiused_ what would’ve been an insult, and I love you for it.”

“So things are okay—sorry! Sorry! I’m doing it again! Why do I malfunction so much?!”  Scorpius sighed and bowed his head. James shuffled over to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“You’re not malfunctioning. You’re about to be a dad. You know what nobody wants to tell dads-to-be?! That _dads_ have to get mentally ready for the baby too! Dads get ‘pregnancy brain’ and forget things because they’re too busy thinking about the safest cots and their shady neighbors that may or may not have committed morally unforgivable crimes! Dads ‘nest’, too!! I can’t tell you how many nights I suddenly woke up with the indescribable urge to put together new baby furniture _right that very moment_. Dads go through mood swings and one minute we can’t wait for the baby to be here and the next we’re worriedly watching the weeks go by and hoping we can get that last package of sleepsuits before the baby arrives. Dads have to build up their dad skills and these months are the perfect time! You know how you build up your dad skills? By taking care of the mother-to-be! In your case, well, it just happens to be very complicated. So what I’m saying is…it’s normal. Entirely normal. It’s just _not_ normal that the mother-to-be isn’t actually the mother and has _three_ dads fretting over her. Like I said. Abnormal. Complicated. Sorry, mate.”

He hadn’t really expected his brother-in-law to tear up. Scorpius covered his mouth with his hand. “You can’t imagine how relieved I am to hear that. I’ve been worried I’m having a sympathetic pregnancy.”

James struggled not to laugh. He had to remember that this was all Scorpius knew about fatherhood or pregnancy experience-wise; they’d never experienced it any other way. “You should’ve talked to me about it if you were worried! Or your dad, or mine! You’re fine, I promise. Unless you start lactating. You…you haven’t…?”

“No,” Scorpius reassured him. He chuckled. “You looked worried.”

James shook his head. He stared unseeingly at the kids’ treehouse. “For a second, everything I knew was wrong…”

Scorpius patted his arm kindly. “Thanks for the encouragement, James. Will you tell Nora that Albus and I are sorry? And tell her that she can absolutely tell us to shut up if we start annoying her.”

“Aw, I will. Don’t worry, though. She’s not angry. Just _really_ needs some Nora Time.”

“Well, make sure she gets it! We can watch the kids if you’d like. Seriously. We could even watch them tonight. The offer is _always_ on the table.”

James considered that. “I’ll talk to her about that and let you know, Scorpius. Thanks!”

Unfortunately, James didn’t have time to talk to her about much more than where the kids’ shoes and bags were. They put the kids into the car as quickly as possible and then sped their way to the school in record time. James and Nora always walked their kids in as a family, something that James realized after the first few days was abnormal, but they didn’t care; it wasn’t about being normal, it was about making their kids happy. Evra held Delilah’s hand, Henry held James’s, Finnigan did his usual morning routine (he alternated between running far ahead of them and getting distracted and falling behind), and Rory stuck to Nora’s side like glue. They’d nearly made it to Evra’s classroom when they were intercepted by the headteacher.

“The Potters!” she greeted, a huge smile in place. “Good morning! How are you, Mr. Finnigan?”

“I’m okay, Jane.”

James nudged Finnigan gently. “Finnigan, that’s _Miss_ Jane!” he corrected.  

Finnigan turned around and gave James a disbelieving stare.

“Yeah, I know?” His ‘ _duh’_ was silent but discernable.

Nora laughed nervously. She reached over and set her hands on Finnigan’s shoulders, dragging him back against her pregnant belly. Her grip was stern. “Sorry about him. He’s…er...an Aries, so…”

“And very spirited,” James added quickly.

“Yes! Very spirited,” Nora agreed.

“That’s okay, I know. Finnigan and I are on a first-name basis with how often I see him in my office…isn’t that right, Finnigan?”

“That is _right_ ,” he affirmed with a cheerful nod. He turned and looked up at Nora and James. “I’ve got my own chair in there!”

James and Nora looked at each other, each equally speechless. While they stared into each other’s eyes and tried to silently determine what to do with their cheeky child, the headteacher kneeled down to address Rory and Evra. She made her voice much gentler than it’d been when addressing Finnigan, which gave James some insight on the reputations his specific kids were making for themselves.

“Evra, your beehive model is hanging in the office now, did you know that?” she said.

Evra lit up. “Really?! Mine?!”

“Oh, yes! It’s _wonderful_! It was painted beautifully! And Rory, I heard you’re a scientist!”

Rory rocked happily on her feet. “I made electricity. What did you do with the mouse?”

Nora coughed lightly. The headteacher slowly stood. “Sorry…what?”

“The mouse in our class. He ran over Lotta’s hair. Is he dead? Did he get smashed up?” she worried.

“Actually,” James said quickly, “I’d like to talk about this: is it _common_ for classrooms to have mice? Are there certain…vaccines…we should have the kids get because I don’t remember them getting a mug—a vaccine for mice related diseases?!”

“Also,” Nora interjected, “I have to say I would prefer if Evra’s teacher didn’t teach my baby about mouse traps. I looked them up. I think they are terrible. It looked like a…medieval torture device? But for mice? I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

The headteacher looked between the parents uneasily.

“Right,” she finally said. “Okay. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Potter, you’re both well acquainted with the…complaint process, so stop by my office at any time and you can fill out…another…form. Okay?”

“You can sit in _my chair_!” Finnigan told his parents excitedly. He turned back to Jane. “Will I see you today?”

“Oh, Finnigan, I wouldn’t dare doubt it…” Jane trailed off. She heaved a sigh. “Well, I’ll save you an orange—see you at lunch, undoubtedly.”

“Wait—Miss Jane!” James said quickly, right as she started to turn away. “If Finnigan’s getting in trouble a lot you only need to tell us, we had no idea, we’re so sorry for his behavior, his teacher always says he’s clever and never tells us that he’s being _naughty_ …”

“He really is a clever and sweet kid,” Nora added. “He’s just so…”

“Spirited?” Jane suggested lightly.

“…Well, yeah…” Nora agreed, her voice small.

“Right now it’s more of a ‘settling in’ issue than a behavioral issue. Finnigan and Rory’s teacher called to discuss it yesterday and left a message. Did you see it?”

“Oh, er…” James trailed off. He looked to Nora for help.

“We don’t actually have a phone in our house. Yeah, we’re…traditional. So traditional! The number we put on the registration forms was for their grandparents’ mobile, but my in-laws aren’t exactly…tech-savvy. We would prefer face-to-face meetings.”

Jane was looking at them oddly, but she nodded. “Set up a time with their teacher today…that would be best…goodbye, children, have a lovely day!”

“Bye, Miss Jane!” Evra smiled. Rory waved. Finnigan saluted her. Henry stared at her in confusion while Delilah mimed Rory’s wave.

“Who’s that?” Henry asked loudly.

James and Nora smiled tightly and quickly ushered the kids down the hall towards Evra’s classroom without answering Henry. Nora leaned in as they came to a stop.

“We _are_ going to file our concerns, right? Jamie, the traps _smash the mice’s heads_!” she hissed.

“Absolutely! And we’ve got to figure out what Finnigan’s doing to earn himself his own private seat in the head’s office…”

They sighed. Nora went to help Evra put her coat and bag up while Evra’s teacher greeted them. She cooed over the younger four Potter children and then glanced over her shoulder at Nora, who was now hugging Remus.

“Baby number six! I bet you’re an excited dad,” she beamed.

James felt his heart sink. “Oh,” he said. “Oh…er…”

It wasn’t difficult for Finnigan. He shook his head at Evra’s teacher at once.

“It’s not _his_ baby!” Finnigan corrected. “It’s Uncle Scorpius’s.” Indifferent to the way the teacher’s face fell, he followed up with: “Can I have a sweet?”

Blood rushed to James’s face. Distractedly, Evra’s teacher withdrew a peppermint from her dress pocket and handed it to Finnigan. James was so embarrassed that he was mostly deaf to the ensuing jealousy fight that measly peppermint caused amongst his kids, though he did notice when Finnigan bit the peppermint into halves and then quarters, giving a piece to himself, Rory, Henry—

James caught Finnigan’s hand as he reached towards his baby sister. “Delilah can’t have sweets, Finnigan. You have it. Listen, Mrs. Smith...what Finnigan meant was…my wife didn’t…it’s our brother-in-law’s baby but it’s not _his-his_ , he didn’t get her _pregnant_ …”

“Oh, you don’t owe me any explanations, Mr. Potter,” the teacher said quickly.  

“She’s doing…” his mind was blanking. _Shit, what’s the word?! What’s the word_?! “NORA BEAR, WHAT’S THE WORD? OH! Nevermind, I remember!!” He looked back at the teacher. “Surrogacy! She’s their surrogate. My brother’s married to a man. They can’t…you know…” James mimed a pregnant belly.

Evra’s teacher bowed over with a relieved laugh. “Oh, thank God, that was horribly awkward! Oh, that’s such a wonderful thing! What a positive example you’re setting for your children!”

James smiled. “We try to teach them the right things to do—Finnigan, _no_! Absolutely _not_! Get _off_ the table! Henry—don’t follow his example!!” James stared at his sons sternly until they’d stepped back down onto the floor. The girls sitting at the table were staring at Finnigan and Henry like they were from another planet. James turned back to the teacher. “Er…I apologize in advance for when Finnigan’s in your class.”

She laughed. “Oh, dear, I’ll be _long_ retired by then—count on that!”

James’s smile fell. “Oh. Okay…”

Nora rejoined them then, slightly out of breath, her hand pressed to her stomach and a few curls pulled widely from her bun.

“Sorry,” she hissed to James. He wrapped an arm around her hip. “Remus and Evra didn’t want to let me go.” She checked her watch. “Oh, bugger—Finnigan and Rory will be a bit late now.”

Before they could turn to leave, Evra’s teacher reached out and actually set her hands on Nora’s stomach. Nora—being Nora—managed a somewhat convincing smile and didn’t back away, but James found it incredibly inappropriate.

“It’s so giving of you,” Evra’s teacher said. “To give your child away for the sake of another. I couldn’t imagine a bigger sacrifice. I can’t imagine how a mother could do that.”

“…Oh…” Nora said through a tight smile. It was not unlike the vaguely offended tone James had just used a few moments prior. “That’s…yeah. Jamie—let’s…”

“Right. Come on, darlings!” he called quickly, ushering their kids back to them. Rory had made herself at home at a table of six-year-old boys— _gotta keep an eye on that_ — Delilah was playing with the sparkly fringe on another student’s jacket, just a step or two behind them, and Finnigan and Henry had thankfully already returned to hug their mum’s legs. James knew better than to say a word to Nora about the teacher's comments within the school—for fear of reducing her to tears in public, which would embarrass her, which would then upset her more—so he took her hand instead as they walked the short way to Finnigan and Rory’s classroom.

“Sorry we’re late,” James greeted. “We were chatting with Mrs. Smith.”

He watched with a sting of insult as both Rory and Finnigan ran off at once to put their things away and sit at their tables, not the least bit upset at being parted from their parents. _Ouch_.

“Well, bye, Rory! Bye, Finnigan! I love you both! I’ll see you later!” James called.

“Bye, my loves!” Nora said, blowing a kiss to both. Finnigan and Rory at least caught her kiss midair and pressed it to their cheeks. James felt a bit better about that.

“Er…Mr. Potter,” their teacher said quickly. “Before you leave, I was wondering if we could talk about some…things…involving your son?”

Right. He’d forgotten about his delinquent. “Of course. Could we set up a face-to-face meeting?”

“Yes, I can come to your home and we can discuss—”

“Oh, no,” James interrupted quickly. “No, our house is…erm…”

“We’re very traditional,” Nora said, giving that excuse another go. “We don’t let…um…” _come on, Nora, you’ve got this…_ “Everybody has to have a…sage cleansing before entering. Sorry. Can we meet you here after school one day this week? Even today? If it’s that…pressing?”

Nora looked across the room at Finnigan and James followed her glance. He looked innocent enough; he was giggling happily with a friend and starting his morning work. But adorable Finnigan giggles were often misleading. James looked back to the teacher.

“Today would be _great_ ,” she said at once. She leaned in and lowered her voice, probably so Henry wouldn’t hear, but he also leaned in so he could. “Your son is very…well, I’ve never had a student like him before. The naughty things he does…not sure how he does them. Last week, he somehow moved the class fish to his water bottle, but I never saw him get out of his seat. What’s weirdest, though, is he’s got this…charm about him—

“We know the charm,” Nora reassured her.

“I can see him do naughty things…or, well, see the aftereffects of his naughty things…but a second later he’s laughing with me and I’m not even angry. It’s a bit unsettling.”

_Oh no. Not good. Why must my children be…exactly like me at their age?_

His teacher leaned in further. “The counselor wants to test him for empathy…”

James recoiled. “What?! You think my son is a _sociopath_?!”

“Oh…goodness!” Nora said, horrified. “He’s not! He’s a very sweet boy! He stopped eating meat at age three because he couldn’t stand the thought of animals being slaughtered! He won’t even drink milk because he thinks it’s ‘stealing’ and he thinks the baby cows will starve to death!”

His teacher smiled, but it seemed a bit strained. “Let’s have a discussion about this this afternoon! Okay, kids, let’s begin!”

As she weaved her way to the front, James and Nora stood there horrified.

“Mummy, can we go home?” Henry stage-whispered.

James lifted both Delilah and Henry up and they hurried from the school. They were so affronted that they forgot to stop by the headteacher’s office and make a statement about the mice torture device shown to his six-year-old’s class. James buckled Henry and Delilah into their muggle carseats and then climbed into the driver’s seat. He glanced to the left. Nora was staring at the windshield in horror, her hands on her stomach and her eyes glassy. James’s heart plummeted. Her pain overrode his own anger.

“Nora, he’s clearly doing accidental magic,” he reminded her. “They don’t know how to explain the things he’s getting away with. And his adorableness _is_ somewhat hypnotizing at times, right? Remember that time he painted the living room wall and then told you _‘it’s you, Mummy’,_ with that adorable smile, and suddenly we couldn’t even be angry anymore? He makes them uncomfortable because they can’t explain him and the only word they have to use is…the word they used. We _know_ he’s not that.”

“Of course he isn’t. It just hurts that _they_ see him that way,” she admitted. She threw her head back against the seat and groaned. “God, Jamie, maybe we were wrong. About all of this. The school and the…this,” she tightened her grip on her stomach.

James had feared hearing those words. It hadn’t happened yet—or even came close to it—since all of this began. He shot a quick look back at their youngest two. He reached up and lowered the muggle TV screen.

“Do you want to watch your art show?” he asked the kids, false cheer in his voice.

“Yes!! Yay!!” Henry said. Delilah mimicked his excitement. Once they were absorbed in the kids’ program, James looked back at his wife.

“What do you mean?” he asked seriously.

She stared unseeingly at the car parked in front of them. “I know Evra’s teacher had good intentions.”

“Right, I’m sure she did,” James agreed.

“But maybe she’s right.” Nora glanced at him, her eyes filling rapidly with tears. “We were so afraid that I’d feel attached to this baby, that I’d see it as mine. We spent so many nights worried about that. But we never considered what it’d feel like if I _didn’t_. I don’t feel the same for this baby as I did ours. I care about her, and I want her to be healthy, and I’m doing absolutely everything I can to make that happen, but…in my heart, she isn’t mine. In my heart, it’s not the same. And I know that I _can_ give her up. And I’m _excited_ to—I’m excited to see Albus and Scorpius’s faces when they get to meet her, I’m excited to watch her grow up happy and loved. James, I’m counting down the weeks until this is over. What sort of mother does that make me? God, maybe she’s right. What kind of mother can do that—can carry a baby for so long, feel it grow, and just…hand it over? I feel nothing close to what I felt before and….it’s been eating away at me for weeks. Maybe we shouldn’t have another baby ever again. Maybe I’m broken or…I don’t know—” she broke off, her voice wavering. James knew the tears were coming before they did. He reached over and pulled her into his arms as best he could; she broke down into tears with her face pressed into his shoulder. “T-This is really confusing,” she admitted through tears, “and I’m not okay.”

James wanted to immediately break down in tears with her, because knowing that she wasn’t okay made him immediately _not okay,_ too, but she was more important than his own anxieties. He stroked her back and tried to unpack her worries.

“Nora, it doesn’t feel the same because it’s _not_ the same,” he said softly. “She’s not our baby. She’s not from you and me and we knew that from the start.”

“Rory isn’t from us either. We didn’t even know she existed when she was born. But I feel that connection with her. I feel like she’s mine, like if she were to disappear, a piece of me would be missing. So what is wrong with me that I don’t feel it for this baby when it’s actually inside of me?”

“We didn’t feel that immediately for Rory, darling,” he reminded her. “It took time. It took months. We had to get to know her, we had to think of her as ours first. We had so many ups and downs before it happened—before we all connected. But we have _never_ thought of this baby as ours. This is what we wanted, remember? We _wanted_ to keep it separate. All the things we did…well, for us to be having this conversation, they clearly worked.”

“I’ve been feeling like a horrible mother and a horrible woman,” she confessed. “And e-every time people say things to me like that—like Evra’s teacher said—I feel worse. I’m scared, Jamie. I don’t understand what I’m meant to be feeling. And the surrogacy counselor keeps saying things like ‘you are meant to feel whatever you feel’ and other rubbish like that, but in the waiting room I sit beside a surrogate who cries the entire time because she wants to keep the baby, and I feel like my emotional pain should be the same as hers. But instead, I just feel frightened. Frightened about what this says about me, frightened that I won’t be able to form a connection with an unborn baby again, frightened that this experience has somehow ruined me and made me cold.”

James glanced back at their youngest two. They were still wrapped up in their muggle program, but James wouldn’t be surprised if Henry was eavesdropping. He tucked Nora’s wayward curls behind her ear and kissed her softly.

“There is no possibility that this has made you unable to connect with a baby, Nora. If we have another one of our own _,_ it’ll be like it was. I promise.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you. It’s okay to feel frightened…I’m frightened. And all of this is so emotional and confusing and we were bound to struggle. But let’s remember our goals at the start. We wanted to give Albus and Scorpius a chance at a family—we’re doing that. We wanted the baby to be healthy, and going by her check-ups and how strongly she kicks, you’re doing that, too. And we _wanted_ there to be a healthy detachment. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to feel confused. Not to echo the counselor’s rubbish advice, but when you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re allowed to feel however the hell you want to feel. You can pretty much do anything you want for the rest of your life, actually. You’ve _officially_ hit saint-like levels of kindness.”

“People keep saying that to me. You say that to me. Only…I don’t feel particularly saint-like. What if our kids think we’d give them up, too?”

“They’re cleverer than that,” James reminded her. He stroked her face. It wounded him so deeply to see her eyes churning with so much worry. “I know this situation is different, but you always feel a bit like this when you’re entering the third trimester. Remember with Evra? You couldn’t sleep for two days straight because you thought you’d never be able to breastfeed?”

She laughed weakly. “I thought my breasts should’ve been way larger by that point…turns out it doesn’t even work like that...thank Merlin for your mum; my dads weren’t exactly helpful with that life concern.”

“Right. With Finnigan, you were told by that Muggle woman that coffee deforms babies.”

“Oh, yeah,” she remembered. She laughed again. “I made our Healer check on his health five times in two days.”

James kissed her again. He rested his forehead against hers and shut his eyes. “With Henry, you were worried about the dust you’d been breathing in at Gringotts.”

“I wore a dust mask for a month…”

“With Delilah, you spent countless nights crying, worried that Henry would feel like he was being replaced and neglected,” he continued.

She grimaced. “Oh, I felt _horrible_...like such a bad mother. Oh…”

“It’s the same this time, even if it doesn’t feel like the same. And we’ll get through it. Everything will be fine. Evra never went hungry, Finnigan is adorable and healthy, Henry doesn’t have asthma, and he doesn’t feel unloved because he has a little sister. And if we have another baby of our own, you’ll love it just as much as you loved Delilah and all the rest. Chin up. The baby will be here in April. Only a few more months! I’m here for you every moment of every day. Even if you don’t feel okay, it’s _okay_. I’m here, and our children are here, and you’re an amazing mother. Merlin, Nora, they don’t make them better than you.”

“Except for your own mum, right?” she teased feebly.

“You and my mum are perfect mums,” James amended, glad she knew him so well. They shared a small smile. “I think you might be right about one thing, though.”

She wiped at her tears. “Oh?”

“Mmhmm. I think Finnigan is too much for muggle school.”

“God, yeah,” she agreed at once. “He’s so much, James.”

“So much…”

* * *

 

“Henry, don’t climb on my filing cabinet drawers,” James scolded, without even having to look up. He knew the sound of that by now. Delilah was playing at James’s feet with one of Uncle George and Uncle Ron’s fake wands and kept falling into hysterical giggles every time it turned into a rubber unicorn. And James was _extremely_ behind on work, but he was trying his best not to panic. He’d get caught up. Maybe. Somehow.

It was nearing lunch when somebody else stepped into his office for a meeting, and what they were wearing made James jump in alarm so hard that he slammed his knees into the underside of his desk.

“Stop!” he ordered, before the man in a dragon-scale jacket had even cleared the doorway. “Do you have your sanitation paperwork? Hold it up for me to see.”

The man patted his pockets. “I had it…damn, looks like I misplaced it.”

“Out. Sorry, out, right now. HENRY, NO!”

Henry had walked over to greet the visitor but stopped at his dad’s panicked cry.

“Relax,” the man said, affronted. “It’s been cleaned.”

“And until you have the documentation, you aren’t allowed in my office. My children are in here, come on, have some consideration!”

The man scoffed. “I don’t believe it’s the dragon scales in the first place. This is just some animal rights lie. I’m here because you have my daughter.”

James crossed his arms. “I don’t recognize you, which means you weren’t the primary caretaker of your child, which means you don’t have any say in this right now. The legal guardian will get the child back once they complete the necessary requirements. Out, please. Now. Before I have to call security.”

“I’m Aurora’s father,” he explained.

James felt his heart plummet with sickening force. For a moment, he forgot about the dragon scales. “Her mother gave up custody and you never had any.” _I’m her father._

“I know. I’m here about her mum. She’s pregnant.”

James eyed the man’s coat again. “Let me guess. Neither of you bothered to get tested for lime pox before conceiving? Or you thought the test results were a scam?”

“I believe something is happening, but I’m not so sure it’s lime pox,” the man shot back. “But she wanted me to organize a solution if the baby _does_ end up like Aurora did. And we know you adopted Aurora. We saw the family photo in the _Prophet_ last month.”

It didn’t take James long. “She’s already trying to get us to take her second child because she couldn’t be bothered to get tested beforehand?”

“We won’t have a Squib. If the Magical Indication Screening is negative after birth, we won’t raise it. I was told the best thing to do is set up arrangements ahead of time.”

James was speechless. “But…you…listen, we have so many programs that help explain what it means to be non-magical, and we have programs to help teach parents how to accept and nurture their—”

“Not interested. We’re _magical_. We can’t have a muggle.”

“It’s not a muggle, it’s—”

“Our bloodline is dying. We have to keep it pure.”

“Well, I can’t do _anything_ without her here. She’s got to take the mandatory six-week resolution class before she can sign off on it. This is ridiculous. We’ve gone above and beyond to prevent this. The testing is available twenty-four hours a day seven days a week free of charge. If you knew you didn’t want a Squib, you both should’ve been tested and _not_ gotten pregnant.”

This was ordinarily when he’d try to sympathize with the parents and find a solution, but in all honesty, he didn’t think they should be allowed to have children—magical or not. He’d never forget the nights Rory cried herself to sleep, confused and devastated by her mother’s abrupt abandonment. When he’d started this department he was so reluctant to take kids away from anybody, and now he found himself wanting to pull as many children away from harm’s way as possible. He’d lost hope that there was a solution to every problem.

He ordered the man out again before he touched any of his kids with his disgusting jacket, and then he slumped down in his seat and covered his eyes. He looked back up when he felt Henry climb up into his lap. His son took his face in his hands and peered seriously at him.

“Daddy. You’re sad?”

James smiled slightly. “Nothing a hug won’t fix.”

His son threw his arms around James’s neck at once. James hugged him close and rubbed his back. He was just so thankful that his children were happy, healthy, and loved. Even if all the kids in their world couldn’t be.

* * *

 

“There you are!! My grandbabies and my Triple Grandbaby!!” Ginny greeted. She smothered the kids in hugs and kisses and then stroked the side of Nora’s stomach. Nora jumped after she’d pulled her hand away.

“Oh, did you feel that?” she asked Ginny. She reached for her mother-in-law’s hand. She pressed it to the top of her stomach. James watched his mum’s face light up.

“Yes! I do! Hello, baby! Hello, little Lyra!” Ginny cooed. James heard Nora inhale sharply a moment later. He shuffled closer to her, concerned. Ginny whistled lowly. “ _Merlin_ , this baby kicks about as ferociously as Lulu did…don’t tell Albus that…we’ve all been lying to him and telling him that this baby will favor his sweet husband in every way…”

“His fault if he believes it,” James snorted. “Lily’s genes probably smothered Scorpius’s with a pillow.”

“Ginny, can we go into the garden with the cats? _Please_?!” Rory pleaded.

“Yes, _please_!” Evra added.

“Right now?! Right now?!” Henry begged. 

“Yes, go on! Have fun!” Ginny allowed. She scooped Delilah up. “Not you, though, angel. You’re staying in here with me.”

Delilah didn’t complain. She played happily with Ginny’s hair while Finnigan snuck over to the table and began cramming biscuits into his mouth.

“Let him. Sugar-free. Most of the ingredients are nut and veggie based. Ha!” Ginny hissed to them. “I’ll kick their sugar habit yet, just watch.”

Once Rory, Evra, and Henry were outside happily romping around with the cats, James realized his dad _wasn’t_ out there.

"Where’s Dad?” he wondered. He pulled Nora to his side and reached over, gently rubbing the spot the baby was still kicking. She let her head fall to his shoulder.

“Get this: he went with Uncle Ron, Neville, Dean, and Seamus to get drinks. I’m so bloody relieved. It’s what they all need. A night getting pissed and finally talking through all of this tension…”

“Oh, that’s lovely!” Nora said. She smiled. “But I wish you’d gone too, Ginny.”

His mum blinked innocently. “Why would _I_ need to go?”

“Are you really trying to sell the idea that this was _their_ battle and had nothing to do with you?” James demanded.

His mum crossed her arms stubbornly. “Well, I couldn’t go. I’ve got to watch the babies, haven’t I? What is Finnigan in so much trouble for, anyway? Finnigan, what did you do at school?”

Finnigan gulped down his mouthful of biscuits and turned to face Ginny. “Today I played with Frank and I maked a picture for Jane ‘cause she said her head hurt.”

"That's _Miss Jane_ , the headteacher," James explained to his mum. 

“See?” Nora hissed to James, wounded. “How could they think our sweet baby boy is a sociopath?!”

“That’s lovely, Finnigan! What did you draw for her?” asked Ginny.

Finnigan beamed. “Her with _no head_! If her head is gone, it can’t hurt! Right, Ginny? Right?”

Nora bowed her head. “ _Oh, God_ …” she groaned.

James met his mum’s eyes. “See what we’re dealing with here, Mum?”

His mum walked over to Finnigan and kissed his face. “He’s _fine_. He’s just different. Spirited!”

“That’s what we said,” James and Nora said in unison.

“It’s the April curse. Hate to say it, but part of me hopes you’ll have _that one_ a bit late. April babies are nothing but trouble. My brothers Fred and George, Lulu, Finnigan…should we add another one to the mix? Not so sure. What’s the due date exactly?”

Nora didn’t even need to think about it. “Fourth of April.”

“Oh. Hm.” Ginny sighed. “Well, I’ll leave a note by the votive candles in St. Jerome’s Church. I’m sure somebody there will talk to their gods.”

“You’re going to pray that your Triple Grandbaby is born premature or that my wife has to carry long past her due date?!” James said, aghast.  

“No, Jamie! Of course not. I’m going to ask them to pray for Albus and Scorpius. Lost cause.”

“ _Ooh_ ,” James said. He considered her theory, one that Nora had offered up herself as soon as they realized Finnigan’s…fiery personality. “All hope lies in the power of Scorpius’s genes.”

Ginny clasped her hands in front of her. “Please, Muggle Gods, let my son-in-law’s temperament at least have a spot at the table.”

“You lot are so mean to Lily,” Nora admonished. She rubbed soothingly over her belly, as if Lyra both knew Lily was where her genes had come from _and_ that they were insulting her. “I love my sister-in-law.”

“I love my sister! Of course I do!” James defended. “We’re only saying…”

“No, Nora’s right,” Ginny said. She frowned. “We should stop. Especially with her being ill.”

“She’s still not right?” Nora demanded. “I’m nearly in my third trimester! She’s been feeling like this since she first took the potions, before Lyra was even implanted!”

“I’m trying to get her to come home—there’s only so much Scorpius can do from this far away and no other Healers have any idea what she's talking about when she tells them about Scorpius's procedures and potions—but you know how she is. Busy all the time, stubborn all the time.”

“Did Scorpius _really_ know what he was doing?” James had to ask. He was concerned. “I mean, you don’t think Nora’s going to feel as poorly as Lily is after the baby is born, do you? She took what Lily took before they put in the embryos.”

“I feel so bad for her. I know she's got to be feeling awful because those potions _did_ make me feel bad,” Nora told them. “It was all the horrible parts of early pregnancy amplified. I can’t imagine feeling like that for this many months.”

“The worst part is I’m sure this has ruined any and all chances of her ever actually wanting to have her own kids. And damn it—she was my only chance for grandkids where Harry and I could really shine!”

James gasped, wounded. “What’s that supposed to mean, Mum?! I’m your favorite! Mum, _I’m your favorite_! So my kids are, too, okay?!”

His mum stared at him oddly. “I just meant Harry and I will have no grandparent competition. Caden’s an orphan. Which, you know, is very tragic. But Harry and I are up for the challenge of being the only grandparents. Too bad that’ll never happen now. Can’t say I blame her. If I had felt those symptoms for that long before having kids, who knows if I ever would’ve had them. It's difficult to know the pain is ultimately worth it if you only experience the discomfort with no reward of a precious baby.”

“I’ll talk to her too. She needs to come home so Scorpius can figure this out,” Nora said. “Jamie, you’ll talk to her as well, yeah? If we all harass her she might consider taking our advice.”

“I doubt it’ll do much good, but yeah, I’ll talk to her.” James glanced at his watch. “We’d better go or we’ll be late for our meeting.”

“Try not to hit anybody,” Ginny advised.  
  
“Just tell you what they said and you’ll hit them for us?” James guessed.

His mum smiled. She wiped away an imaginary tear. “You know me so well, Jamie.”

* * *

"You can’t prove that he did it.”

Finnigan’s teacher huffed. “Look. One minute the fish was in the aquarium. I looked away from your son for _maybe_ twenty seconds, and the next thing I know, everybody’s shrieking at Finnigan’s table and he’s got the fish _in his water bottle_.”

James wasn’t sure what to say. Nora gave it a go. “Did any of the other kids see him get up from his seat?”

“Well…no…”

Nora eyed the aquarium. “Finnigan isn’t tall enough to reach the lid unless he stood up on a chair. How could he get across the room, pull a chair over, stand up, catch a fish with his bare hands, return the chair back, return _himself back_ , unscrew his water bottle, put the fish in, and rescrew it, all within twenty seconds _and_ without anybody even seeing him stand up?”

James’s beamed proudly. “Yeah! What she said! How?!”

“Look,” the teacher repeated, frustrated. “I can’t prove he did it, no. But there’s something…off about your son. And he’s cheeky, but less in a cute and precocious way and more in a…witty and cunning way? It’s always like he’s…up to something. And he plays people—manipulates them.”

“It isn’t his fault he’s adorable,” Nora defended. “He can smile and melt people’s hearts. He gets that from his daddy.”

Nora pointed at James. He gave his most angelic smile. Finnigan’s teacher was not as amused as they’d hoped she’d be.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, Mr. and Mrs. Potter. I know when a child’s not normal.” She slid a card across the table. “Matthew is the area’s best child psychologist—I urge you to talk with him.”

Nora took the card. James resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at the teacher.

“Thank you. Was that all?”

“It’s Rory’s turn to bring snack this Friday.”

“Perfect. Great talking with you. Jamie?” Nora held her hand out, a wordless plea for help. James stood and helped hoist her to her feet; the tiny kid tables weren’t easy for her to sit down at or get up from. James knew the teacher was officially dead to Nora when his wife said her goodbyes without looking the teacher in the eye once. James felt equally annoyed, but he wouldn’t leave without some parting words. He faced the teacher at the door.

“My son’s healthy and happy and we love him just the way he is. He’s not hurting anybody. You can’t prove he’s even broken any rules. And I’m concerned that you’ve already got him labeled as a ‘troubled kid’ and are going to continue seeing him in that light. If you can’t treat him impartially and fairly, we can move our kids elsewhere. I’m sure we can find a better school. We’ll talk with Miss Jane about it.”

With that, James took Nora’s hand and stamped off. The second they reached the car, Nora tore the card up into tiny pieces, dropped them to the ground, and then vanished them with her wand.

“What a _bitch_ ,” she muttered under her breath. Without another word, she lowered herself carefully into the car, leaving James gaping like an idiot, utterly taken aback by her dirty language.

* * *

They were greeted by three drunken grandparents, Neville, and Uncle Ron.

“HEY!!!” Dean and Ron chorused.

"James! Nora!" Neville beamed. 

“My beautiful baby girl!” Seamus said. He walked over and pulled Nora into a tight hug. James stared warily at his dad, clearly drunk and yet still playing peek-a-boo with Delilah.

“Dad, I’d prefer if you didn’t watch my daughter while you’re pissed.”

“I’m _not_. I’m not _pissed_ ,” Harry said. He tried to set his glasses on Delilah’s face, but they slipped down and landed in her lap. “I think Delilah needs glasses, Jamie.”

“Oh, Merlin. Where’s Mum? And the rest of my kids?”

“Quidditch!”

“Quidditch?! Henry’s not even four yet!”

“He’s talented, though!” Ron said.

“Very, very talented!” Dean agreed. He hiccupped. “We’ve got it all figured out, James! Henry’s a Gryffindor—”

“Very Gryffindor,” Ron added.

“Very, very!” Dean continued, his voice absolutely trembling with pride. 

“They’re _all_ Gryffindor,” Ron argued at once.

“Noooooo…” Harry shook his head. "I think they'll have a full set. One in each." 

“No, they're all Gryffindor!"

“No…”

“Yes!”

"I've got to agree with Harry," admitted Neville. "I just don't think Finnigan is a Gryffindor."

By some miracle, Ginny entered the kitchen before the argument escalated, the rest of James’s kids in tow.

“MUMMY! DADDY!”

While James and Nora greeted their kids, Ginny appraised the drunken men, who were currently taking bets on which house the kids would be sorted into. When an argument over Evra's placement nearly resulted in a half-formed plan to sneak Evra to Hogwarts, "borrow" the Sorting Hat, and try to find out early, Ginny intervened. 

“You know, I think I liked it better when we were all reporting each other for kidnapping.” She shook her head at the men and then turned to James. “Well? How was it?”

“After some deep thought, muggle education might not be a good way to go,” James muttered.

“His teacher means well,” Nora said fairly, to James’s private amusement. He couldn't forget the word she'd called the teacher when it was just the two of them. “She just doesn’t understand. And it’s not Finnigan’s fault, either. He struggles so much with controlling his magic. Evra was never like that.”

“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you two about that,” Ginny said quickly. “When we watched them a little over a year ago Evra seemed to be able to actually control and use her magic and that’s very…very…unusual—”

“Mummy, my tummy hurts,” Henry whined loudly.

“Oh, no, my love! Come here!!” Nora swept Henry up and kissed his tummy. He giggled happily. James spotted his dad _once again_ trying to put his glasses on Delilah and decided to rescue her. He walked over and pulled Delilah from his dad’s arms. Despite Harry's pestering, she was moments away from sleep. She yawned adorably. 

“Hey!” Harry complained. “No!”

“Yes! You keep trying to put your glasses on her, Dad, and they’re just not going to fit! They just won’t!” James kissed his tiny daughter and snuggled her close. She cooed _dada_ happily into his ear; he smiled as his heart melted.

“I really do think she needs glasses,” Harry persisted.

“Let’s talk about this when you’re sober,” James said. “We’ve got to get home; Albus is coming over to make dinner.”

They wrangled the kids back into the car. Nora turned around and eyed her children.

“I’m going straight into the house for one of Gran Molly’s chocolate apricot biscuits. The yummy ones that are usually in the orange jar. If you lot have found my secret stash and eaten them, it’s best to tell me now so I can prepare myself for disappointment.”

Silence. Not a good sign. Nora sighed.

“Who?”

“…All of us,” Evra admitted in a tiny, ashamed voice. “When Alby and Scorpius were watching us.”

“Did you lot at least space them out instead of eating them all in one sitting?”

“Henry ate ten in a row!” Rory shared proudly.

James grimaced. “Are you sure you ate the chocolate apricot ones? Mummy hid those very well. Where did you find the ones you ate?”

“Inside the old fluffy coat in the guest room wardrobe!” Finnigan said.

“…Yep. That was the hiding place. Unbelievable. You lot have the noses of beagles,” James complained.  

“I’d say I’d get a new hiding spot, but I don’t even think the moon would be tricky enough,” Nora grumbled. She slid down in the seat and rested her hands on her stomach. “Your mum’s right. We’ve got to kick their sugar habit.”

“Oh, no,” James said, horrified. “Let’s deal with that after the baby’s born. We both can’t take that stress right now. Five kids with sugar withdrawals? No thanks.”

“…Fair point. We’ll start in the new year.”

“Right. I mean, it only just turned into this year two days ago, but yeah. The new year.”

* * *

They were a bit late, so by the time they arrived, Albus already had dinner underway, Scorpius had done all the backed up laundry, and to both Nora and James’s surprise, Albus had brought over _another_ container of the biscuits the Potter kids had stolen.

“Hey! We were just talking about those on the way over!” James exclaimed, pleased. Nora threw her arms around Albus’s shoulders and kissed him soundly on the cheek. Albus was grinning happily when she leaned back.

“God, I’ve been craving these all day and the kids destroyed the secret stash,” she explained.

“I know,” Albus admitted, a bit sheepishly. “I found them covered in crumbs and shame last Friday.”

“Yeah, I find them like that a lot. Doesn’t bode well for their futures…” mused James. He walked over to Scorpius—who was folding clothes with a flick of his wand at the dining room table—and clapped his shoulder. “You didn’t have to do the laundry, mate. I’ve been keeping it _mostly_ under control…well…partially…well…the kids had a ‘science experiment’ last night and then there was a cooking accident and…thanks, Scorpius.”

Scorpius smiled. “I don’t mind! I like it, it’s calming. Nora—” everybody seemed to collectively hold their breath— “how was work?”

While Nora treated Scorpius and Albus to an animated story about the vault fiasco the day prior (she’d had to rescue a thief from the insides of one of her complicated vaults), James took his children out into the garden to play and hopefully stay out of the way while Albus finished dinner. He sat at the patio table with Evra while she did her homework. He watched her work through her first assignment quickly and confidently; it made him smile. The first night of homework, she’d been an anxious mess, worried that she wasn’t ‘clever enough’. She’d caught on quicker than they’d expected. Even if his muggle school experiment went badly in the end, it would’ve all been worth it just to help Evra overcome a few of her anxieties. It was good for her to learn that, despite how anxious she was at the start, things turned out okay in the end. For a girl who had clung to James’s leg and refused to let go on the first day, she was quite at home in her classroom now. Remus being there helped a lot too, of course.

“Do you like muggle school, Evra?” James heard himself ask. “And I’m not making adult conversation. You know how some adults do that? Ask each other questions they don’t really want a real answer to? I’m not doing that. Do you really like it? Does it make you happy to go?”

Evra looked up from her subtraction problems. “Auntie Molly’s boyfriend does that to you. He asks ‘how are you?’ then he doesn’t even let you finish.”

James smiled. “Right. You see everything, don’t you, darling? I forget sometimes how much you’re growing. So what do you think about school?”

Evra looked back down at her homework. James watched as she pressed her thumbnail against the side of her pencil, scratching a thin line into the soft wood. It reminded James of the way he dug _his_ nail into the skin of his fingers. He recognized the quiet gesture as anxiety at once. His stomach churned easily.

“I like my friends and reading is fun,” she began. James waited patiently. Her unspoken ‘ _but…’_ hung in the air between them. Finally: “It feels like pretend feels.”

James considered that. “Do you mean the people seem to be pretending to be nice?”

“No. I have to play pretend all day. Remember, ‘cause you said we have to say you work in the ‘government’, and Mummy works in a big bank, and that we were taught at home, and that we’re muggles, and that magic isn’t even real.”

 _Oh_. Evra looked right back at her homework, indifferent to the way James’s heart had just inched down towards his toes.

“And how does that make you feel? Playing pretend all day?” he wondered.

She shrugged, clearly unsure how to answer that. James rephrased his question.

“Are you happy to go to school in the mornings? Or do you wish you could stay home?”

“I’m happy ‘cause my sister and my brother and my Remus go. But I think they don’t like us there.”

James lifted his eyebrows. His mind flew to Finnigan’s teacher, who clearly had a vendetta against him. “Why would you say that?”

She shrugged again. “We have to pretend. I don’t think they like witches and wizards. And sometimes during reading time, in our books, there are witches and they’re naughty and they hurt people. They're always the bad ones.” While James absorbed that, Evra looked up and met his eyes. “Daddy? Is Rory one of them or one of us?”

James reached across the table at once and took Evra’s hands in his. “Oh, darling, Rory is…” he stopped. His instinct was to say _‘one of us’_ , but he realized too late how polarizing that sounded. “Rory is a Potter now. She’s our family.”

Evra didn’t let it go like he’d hoped. “But is she a witch like Mummy or is she a muggle like Mrs. Smith?”

“She’s…” oh, he’d grown to _hate_ the word ‘squib’, but he had no idea how else to explain it. “She is a member of our world—the wizarding world. But she won’t ever be able to do magic like you.”

It was essentially just a rephrasing of what he’d already told her. That fact was not lost on her. “But she’s not a witch like me?”

“…No, not exactly, no,” James admitted.

Evra nodded once, though she seemed upset. “What about the baby in mummy’s belly?”

“Will it be a witch?” James clarified. Evra nodded again. “I believe so, yes. Mummy’s still free from lime pox, so Lyra will be a witch like you.”

“Oh,” Evra said, crestfallen. James hadn’t expected that reaction.

“You look disappointed,” he said gently, helping to give her a word for her emotion.

Evra bowed her head and held James’s hands tighter. “I wish she was like Rory so Rory doesn’t have to be all by herself.”

 _Oh_. James’s eyes burned at once.

“Oh, darling,” he said softly, pained. He extracted his hands, stood, and walked over to her. He lifted her up into his arms and held her close. She sniffled into his neck. “I know. I don’t want her to be by herself, either.”

“Mummy can have another baby after this baby,” Evra persisted. “And it can be like Rory.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, honey bear. But we might adopt again one day. Would you be okay with that?”

She nodded against his shoulder. All at once, he remembered the visitor he’d had to his office today. Rory’s mum was pregnant again. They would almost certainly give the baby up, and honestly, they probably should. He didn’t want to get his hopes up or mention it to Nora yet—for fear of causing her undue stress—but he couldn’t help but think that it’d be perfect. Rory would have somebody just like her—genetically and in terms of being non-magical—and they could end this pregnancy with a baby, after all. Newborns often went first in terms of adoptions, but not non-magical babies. Even if he wasn’t the one raising Rory, he would’ve wanted the baby to go with its birth sibling. That would’ve been the very first home he tried to secure for the unwanted infant. Perhaps it didn’t change anything at all that that home happened to be his.

He wanted to tell Evra that he was trying his hardest to make it so that non-magical children with magical siblings could attend a special program at Hogwarts, but he didn’t want to get her hopes up. Instead, he kissed her hair and set her back down.

“Why don’t you go play? We can finish your homework after dinner, just you and me.”

She brightened. “Okay!!”

He waited until he was certain they were all playing together nicely, he reinforced the gate to Delilah’s outside play area so she couldn’t escape and try to scale the playground with her siblings, and then he walked over to the largest tree, where Padfoot was resting in the shade. He kneeled down in front of his dog. Padfoot's tail thumped the earth immediately. James scratched his head and leaned in.

"Watch them, okay, boy?" he whispered.

Padfoot responded by thumping his tail harder. James stroked behind his ears for a few moments and then stood, heading back inside the house. He found Scorpius cooing to Nora’s belly, his every word drenched with love and longing, and it was only moments like that that James felt any real sting of jealousy or sadness. He worked through it quickly enough, though.

“And you’re _sure_ you don’t want any of Delilah’s old baby clothes?” Nora asked. “Because we don’t mind loaning them out to you.”

Albus snorted. He glanced over at them from his place in front of the stove. “Nora, Scorpius has already bought so many outfits that Lyra will probably _never_ wear the same thing twice. It’s getting out of hand.”

“I can’t help it!” Scorpius admitted. “They’re so cute—the outfits! So many little dresses and socks and hats! It’s a compulsion, I tell you, a _compulsion_! I’m helpless to it! I bought five dresses and ten pairs of little baby tights on my way over here!”

James laughed. “I probably would’ve done the same with Evra if I’d had any money. But, you know. Teen pregnancy. Doesn’t make much room for excessive buying.”

“It definitely doesn’t,” Nora agreed. She patted Scorpius’s hand (which was still resting atop her stomach, probably waiting to feel Lyra move). “Lyra’s a lucky girl.”

Scorpius leaned in closer to her belly. “Yes, she’s Papa’s lucky little angel—oh! There!! Aw, what a strong kick!! Albus, she kicked _so hard!_ Come feel it!!"

“Yeah,” Nora agreed tightly, after a quick wince. James guessed the baby had kicked her in the ribs or had “head-butted” her cervix, something that James thought _sounded_ very painful, though had no frame of reference for how much. “Adorable!”

Albus approached quickly, a wooden spoon still in hand. He kneeled in front of Nora, passed the spoon to James without even glancing his way, and then immediately rested his ear over Nora's stomach. His green eyes studied the floor as he waited. James knew the  _exact_ moment he felt the baby's movements because his eyes lit up and his face stretched with a huge grin. He murmured gently to the baby while Scorpius flounced around excitedly. Their fawning only ended when Nora gave another sharp intake of breath; the baby must've been moving about nearly as wildly as her "papa" was. Scorpius calmed down, kneeled, and gently rubbed over the baby. James knew from experience that that usually made them shift position, and sure enough, Nora’s grimace eased a moment later.

“You know,” Scorpius said thoughtfully. “My dad says I didn’t kick that much. Not that he felt or my mum said, anyway. Said I mostly just flipped and turned around and around and around…like a little fish who couldn’t stop swimming. They thought I was going to have to be removed by a Healer because I was turned sideways up until the end, but I turned back around at the last moment. So I’m glad Lyra’s a kicker; maybe she’ll burn off energy and stay put head-down!!”  

Nora glanced back at James. He pressed his lips together.

“Really? Interesting…” Nora said.

“Lily did,” Albus said loudly, voicing what James and Nora had silently decided not to. “One of my first memories is of my mum yelling _‘I’m going to evict this bloody kangaroo!’_. While pregnant with her, obviously. Lily also once made my mum wee herself at work. Well, Mum blames Lily in that story—says she kept slamming her head into her full bladder—but maybe she just really had to go, who knows.”

“Aww,” Scorpius cooed. It was not the reaction James had expected. He had been grimacing at the thought of something inside of him slamming against his bladder. “I hope you’ll be strong and confident and happy, then, little Lyra, just like your Auntie Lulu.”

“Do you? Do you hope that?” Albus muttered. James snickered along with his brother. Scorpius ignored them completely, too absorbed in interacting with his unborn daughter. Nora had stated time and time again that it was important for Lyra to hear Scorpius and Albus’s voices as much as possible, but James still caught her looking a bit bored and frustrated sometimes when their brothers were cooing at the baby for long periods of time. He knew it had to be stifling to be stuck in one place. So when he caught that brief look in her eye again this time, he stepped in.

“Scorpius,” he said. “You know what would be a good idea? To help Lyra? You could read to the baby! Shakespeare, even! Nora’s favorites, even!”

Scorpius took to the idea at once. “That’s a great idea!!”

While Scorpius retreated to the library in their house to pick out a play, James brought the chocolate and apricot biscuits over to his wife. She shifted and got into a different position, took the biscuits, and kissed James. He smiled as she stroked his cheek softly.

“You’re my hero,” she said.

James beamed. “I do try.”

“You succeed.”

It ended up being everything but dull as Scorpius essentially acted out an entire play by himself, animated and entirely entertaining. Once James ushered the kids inside, they joined in on Scorpius’s performance, and that only upped the comedy factor. After an hour of laughter, they had a quick dinner, said their goodbyes to their brothers, settled the kids to bed, helped Evra with her homework, settled _her_ to bed, and then finally collapsed underneath their own covers, as exhausted as they always were at the end of the day.

“Rory and Henry have got a real talent for acting,” Nora yawned.

“Evra would if she were more outspoken. Finnigan would if he were _less_ outspoken,” James agreed. Nora’s laugh was quiet and sleepy.

“Nora?” James asked. He’d planned on talking to her about Rory’s unborn sibling, but when they met eyes in the dim light, he backed out. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Jamie baby.”

He curled his body around hers and nuzzled his cheek against her hair. He felt the baby shift underneath his hand as he rested one on the side of her stomach. He felt a brief sting of longing again. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep this baby; it’s just that he missed _this_ , when it was theirs. He missed sharing it with her. He missed it being _their_ experience, their bond. He missed being the one to sing and talk to the baby. He missed everything about it. And he’d accept and support her in whatever she decided, but he had to admit to himself that he’d feel extremely gutted if she decided she didn’t want any more babies because of this experience.

“I miss this,” he admitted quietly. He let himself stroke her stomach and took a deep breath against his widening heart. “I miss when this was ours and ours alone.”

“Me too, Jamie. Everything is so much better when we share it,” she whispered back. She set her hand over his and stroked the back of it with her thumb. “Maybe that’s what’s ultimately missing from this…maybe that’s why I feel so disconnected from it. The experience never felt like mine. Never felt like ours.”

He rested his chin against her scalp and shut his eyes. “It’s odd because this entire thing has somehow been both less difficult and more difficult than I expected.”

“No, I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s been the same for me. Easier in some ways, harder in others. Despite that, I’m still glad I did it. Sometimes…sometimes I think it was a mistake. Sometimes I’m petrified and it feels very…suffocating. But most of the time…I’m proud of myself.”

“Merlin, _I’m_ proud of you,” he said thickly. He was always reduced to mush when they had open, quiet conversations in the dark. “So incredibly proud.”

“I’m proud of _you_. I know this isn’t easy for you, even if you won’t admit it.”

He couldn’t lie. “Sometimes, yeah. It’s difficult.”

“I know. You hide it well, though.”

“Sometimes,” he corrected fairly. “Except when I’m shoving my brother away when he tries to help you up and such.”

“Well, Jamie, you did that sometimes _before_ this baby, so…”

James laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Nora?”

“Hmm?”

“Rory’s birth parents are having another baby. Her birth father came back into the picture and visited my office today. They refused to do the testing, are still wearing dragon scale products, and don’t seem to believe in lime pox, so they apparently thought, if they had another, it’d just randomly be different than Rory.”

Nora’s voice was bitter. “I’m guessing they’re starting to realize it won’t be.”

“Right. There’s still so much distrust in the Ministry out there, which I partially understand, but how could they do that? Bring another baby into the world when they aren't prepared to love it no matter what?”

“Because it’s not its own person to them. The baby isn’t. Just an extension of themselves or a toy or an…accessory. They don’t care about their kids; they care about having their perfect image. We saw that with how they treated Rory. I just hope they find this baby a better family from the very start. I wouldn’t want them to try and ‘teach the Squib out’ like they did with Rory and then abandon the baby from the only family it ever knew at age three when that fails.”

James didn’t even bother being vague because he knew his wife would see through it. “They want us to take it if it is non-magical. So it can grow up with Rory.”

“It’s what I would want. If-- for some reason-- our kids didn’t have us, I would want them to have each other.”

“Merlin, me too,” James admitted. The thought of them being separated made him nearly sick with sadness. Actually, the thought of him being separated from his own siblings in such a real way made him feel sick. “Siblings should be together. I have no idea how far along she is, though. Would you want to do that? Take on a newborn during this or after it? I know we both say it a lot, Nora, but we’ve got so much going on.”

“We do,” she agreed. “But, you know, we always find a way, don’t we? We always have.”

James thought about his hectic seventh year. He remembered Nora studying for her N.E.W.T.s while in actual labor. He smiled. “We do.”

“I don’t know how I’ll feel after this baby is born—maybe the stress will be extreme, maybe I’ll just feel relieved—but I do know that we’ll figure it out. James, if the baby needs a home, we’ll give it one here. I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t turn that baby away and send it to live with strangers.”

“We could still be involved in its life, even if it lived elsewhere,” James reminded her softly. “Rory could still get to know the baby.”

“She could. But she’d still be alone. The only one in our family who can’t fully partake in our world. That eats away at me, Jamie. The knowledge that, when the kids are grown, Rory will always be partially outside of our world. It would be such a gift for her, for the rest of her life, to have her birth sibling here.”

James knew she was right—and he’d been thinking the same things deep down, too—but he didn’t want to make any set decisions yet. He kissed her cheek.

“We’ll talk with the parents. The mum still has to go through the six-week course before she can sign over her parental rights. We’ll see how you’re feeling as this baby’s birth gets closer. Your happiness is most important.”

Nora lifted his hand up and kissed his palm. “You’re such a lovely husband, you know that?”

His heart soared from the compliment. “It’s all I ever wanted to be. Your husband and our children’s father. You’ve always made me want to be better.”

“Aw,” she said. He could hear her smile. “It’s sweet but, you know, I’ve realized that I’m not actually very nice. I thought that I was. I thought that I was a great role model for our children when it came to being understanding and patient…I always tried to be, anyway. But today, Jamie, when that woman was talking about our Finnigan…” she trailed off. “I might have actually hit her if she pushed me too far. I do _not_ like people talking about our babies.”

“That’s not being a bad person. That’s just being a Mama Bear,” he murmured. “And she’s wrong. We’ll figure it out. We hoped that Finnigan would get his magic under control, but we always knew there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to stay at school. If we’ve got to take him out, it’ll be fine.”

“I do miss him coming to work with me,” Nora admitted. She moved James’s hand back to her stomach. “When he’s not there, Henry tries to play with Delilah, but she’s just too tiny for his roughhousing.”

“Though she’d love to play on his level,” James said, amused. “She wants to do everything they do.”

“Without a doubt.”

Warm with love for his family, James slipped off into a comfortable sleep with ease.

* * *

 

“But why am _I_ not going to school?” Finnigan persisted. He stood uneasily in front of James and Nora’s wardrobe, watching in confusion as James helped Evra into her tights while Nora braided Rory’s hair. He was still in his pajamas; they’d told him not to put his uniform on. He was taking it worse than they’d thought he would.

James toed the thin line between getting Finnigan excited for his day and making the others jealous. “I have a different job for you to do today.”

“But I don’t want a job. I’m just four-years-old!”

James suppressed his laughter. “Finnigan, you’re going to take a little break from school.”

“But _why_?”

“Because…because…” James sighed. He finished straightening Evra’s tights, stood, and sat on the edge of the bed. He patted the space beside him. Finnigan walked over and climbed up at once. He curled up against James’s side and looked up at his dad with wide, searching eyes. James stroked his curls back from his face. “Because you’ve been doing magic accidentally and we can’t do magic in front of muggles.”

Finnigan frowned deeply. The injury filling his brown eyes made James a bit sick. “But I didn’t mean to.”

“I know. And you’re not in trouble. But you need a little break, okay? Besides. I need _you_ to help me talk to Auntie Lulu. We’re going to use your adorable face to convince her to come home and see a Healer. She’s ill.”  
  
“Ill?!” Finnigan said, horrified.

“Auntie Lulu?! No fair!! I want to talk to her!” Evra complained.

Rory didn’t move because Nora was still doing her hair, but she frowned. “Finnigan isn’t going to school with me?”

“Not today, my darling,” Nora told her softly. Rory bit her bottom lip worriedly but didn’t argue. James helped Rory into her tights while Nora moved onto Evra’s hair. Finnigan shifted from obsessing over why he wasn’t allowed to go to school today to what was wrong with his Auntie Lulu.

“Does Auntie Lulu have a fever?”

“I don’t think so,” James reassured his son. He straightened the seam on the toe of Rory’s tights and then kissed her forehead. “All done! Good job being patient, Rory Girl.”

“Does she have gee-hard-uh? From lake water? Like I did?”

“No, sweetheart, that intestinal parasite was all yours,” Nora told Finnigan. James shuddered.

“Dragon pox?”

“No.”

“A cold?”

“No.”

“The Ew?”

“The Flu? No.”

Finnigan huffed, frustrated. He walked over and climbed up onto James’s lap. James met his son’s eyes as he held his face. “Daddy. Then _what_?”

“We don’t know, darling,” James said, trying his hardest to remain patient. “That’s why we want her to come home and let Uncle Scorpius make her all better.”

“She should!” Finnigan agreed. “I bet if she’s nice Uncle Scorpius will give her sweets at the end!!”

“Yeah, well, don’t get your hopes up on Auntie Lulu being—” James caught Nora’s gently disapproving look. He decided to stop insulting his sister for the time being. “…Maybe!”

Finnigan didn't give up. He pestered them as they walked downstairs, while they walked Padfoot, over breakfast, and he even followed James up the stairs and continued his diagnostic harassment while his dad dressed for work. James finally lost his patience as they walked back downstairs.

“Sunburn?” Finnigan mused.

“Finnigan, we _don’t know_.”

“Head hurts from ice cream?”

“Nora,” James hissed, as he walked past her in the kitchen. “Please save me.”

Nora leaned in and pulled Finnigan over to her. She hugged him as closely as she could. He looked up at her, grinning, as she leaned in and kissed the edge of his smile. “Finnigan, listen to you! You know so much about illnesses! How very clever!”

Finnigan beamed proudly. “Mummy, maybe she ate bad chippies like Henry did when we saw the animals.”

“Perhaps she did! That’s a good idea. You can ask her when you talk to her, okay?”

“Okay!” Finnigan agreed.

“You know, Finnigan, you’d make a great Healer, just like your Uncle Scorpius! Do you want to be like Scorpy when you grow up?” asked Nora.

Finnigan took in a ragged, excited gasp. _“YES,_ ” he said gleefully.

“Let’s hope he sticks with that Healing interest once he’s grown,” Nora hissed later, once they were driving the elder two to school. “God and Merlin both know he’s not going to make it professionally with Quidditch…”

James choked on the sip of tea he’d just taken. He pictured FInnigan’s sloth-riding technique. “Blimey, yeah. Fingers and toes crossed for Healing.”

* * *

 

“Okay, sit right here…perfect!” James praised. Finnigan waited patiently in one of the armchairs in front of James’s desk, Harry and Ginny’s pocket phone in hand. James hurried over, put out the _in a meeting_ sign on his office door, and then walked back over to his son. He kneeled down beside him. “Okay, Finnigan. Let’s hear it. Do you remember what you need to do?”

Finnigan didn’t even need to pause to think about it. “Smile and be so cute and tell Auntie Lulu that I miss her and I want her to stay alive so she needs to see Scorpy.”

James leaned in and kissed Finnigan’s forehead. “You’re a natural!”

“It’s _easy_ ,” Finnigan said, a confident smile in place.

“Remember, if you do a great job, I’ll let you eat five entire biscuits.”

“How about six?”

“We’re not bargaining on this, Finnigan.”

“Fine.”

James started a video call with his sister and then quickly retreated to the sofa and waited. After four long rings, he heard his son giggle in delight.

“Auntie Lulu!!! I see you!! Hi, Lulu!” he cried, delighted. 

“Finnigan!” his sister cried. She sounded pleased to see him, but that joy faded to confusion a moment later. “Where are your parents? Why do you have your Harry's phone?”

 _You can do it, Finnigan_ …

“Daddy is asleep. Mummy is at work. I miss you _sooo_ much.”

It sounded a tiny bit rehearsed, but James knew Finnigan was giving such an adorable expression that nobody could hope to realize that.

“Your dad fell asleep and left you all alone?” Lily pressed, skeptical. “JAMES! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU’VE GOT A KID!”

James stretched out along the sofa and feigned sleep. Finnigan turned the phone towards him to show his aunt, as planned.

“He is so tired,” he said solemnly.

Lily sighed. James guessed she was resigning herself to the fact that she’d have to be a long-distance babysitter. There was always a chance she’d say _fuck it_ and end the call—she might’ve done when she was even a few years younger—but James had a feeling she wouldn’t. He turned out to be right. “I guess I’m your babysitter now, aren’t I?”

“I picked you ‘cause I love you best,” Finnigan affirmed.

James grinned into the cushions when his sister replied because her voice had _definitely_ softened. “Well, you already know that you’re my favorite.”

“Yep.”

“What are you doing today? Aren’t you in muggle school now? What time is it there?”

“Dunno,” Finnigan shrugged. “Mummy and Daddy won’t let me go to school anymore ‘cause I keep doing magic by an accident.”

“Yeah? What kind? Anything cool?”

Finnigan considered that. “I turned a mean teacher’s hair white.”

James glanced sharply at Finnigan. Nobody had mentioned _that one_ to him and Nora.

Lily snickered. “Wicked! What else?”

“I put Coco in my water.”

“What?! Is Coco…a kid?!”

“No, he’s a fish who lives in our class. But he wants to be free.”

“So you were going to set him free?”

“Well, I wanted to put him in the river, and then he was in my water bottle, so I guess my magic wanted me to.”

“‘My magic wanted me to’,” Lily quoted. “You’re a genius, you know that? I’m using that one later.”

“Lulu, when are you coming to see me?” Finnigan sounded pretty pathetic. Perfect.

“Soon. I’m going to spend all of April in London. We talked about this last week, kid. Remember? You and I are having a joint birthday party? Baby Lyra is going to be born? There’s also a Pumpkin Pasties concert?”

“I’m going to the concert with you?!”

“Absolutely not. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Finnigan sounded slightly resentful when he spoke next. “Is _Cade_ going to the concert?”

“Absolutely not,” Lily repeated. “He’s more of a Butterbeers in Boston man when it comes to music. The majesty of a Pasties’ concert would be lost on him. Aster, Jillian, Emi, Claire, Rosie, and Iset. Just ladies.”

“My mummy’s a lady.”

“Your mummy will be recovering from birthing a baby. She’s going to sit this one out. Or, well, _lie_ this one out...I'm sure sitting will be painful for a while. And anyway, she's actually more of a Butterbeers in Boston type, too. Why’d you ask that like that? ‘Is _Cade_ going?’—are you angry with Caden?”

“He steals you the entire time. Always.”

“Technically the dragons steal me away. Are you angry with the dragons?”

Finnigan considered that. “Maybe I am.”

“Well, if you’re angry with him, I’ll just tell him to give me your birthday present. I can have two. And he got you something _great_.”

“NO!” Finnigan said at once. “No, please, Lulu! I love him! I want my present!”

“Sell out. Lesson one: if you’re going to be angry at someone, you’ve got to stick to your grudge no matter what.”

“…Am I still getting my present?”

Lily laughed. “Of course, Finnigan. I was teasing you.”

Finnigan was _extremely_ off track, and James doubted he’d ever remember to get back on it, but he wasn’t too worried; Lily was at least engaged in her conversation with Finnigan and James felt confident that it would naturally get to where he wanted it to. And, once again, his instincts were correct. Lily sighed in discomfort a second later and his clever son didn’t miss it.

“You’re ill,” he said.

“Yeah. Yep.”

“What's wrong with you?”

“I did weird things to my body with weird potions,” she answered shortly.

“Do you have a fever?” Finnigan asked again. _What is my son’s obsession with fevers?_

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My tummy hurts,” Lily said shortly. “And, you know, fainting. I’ve fainted twice.”

“What’s fainting?” Finnigan wondered.

Lily must’ve given a reenactment. James heard a dull _thump_ followed by Finnigan gasping in horror.

“LULU!!”

“That’s fainting,” she explained.

“You die?!”

“Eh…not precisely, but you can think of it like that,” she said. _No, Lily,_ James groaned internally.

“But I don’t want you to die!!” Finnigan panicked. “Lulu, come home _now_! Right _now_!”

“Whoa! You can’t talk to me like that! I’m your elder sort of!”

“Right _now, now, now_! You are ill and you need a Healer! Scorpy will help you! I will pat your hair and bring you water! Come back!”

“Merlin, calm down! I’m fine! I’ve been like this for months now, I’m sure I’m not going to die!”

“You are dying small-ly!! Healers make you better!”

“Wha—? What is this about? Did Daddy tell you to make me come home?” 

“No. Daddy told me to make you see a Healer.”

James sat up. “Finnigan!” he cried.

“Why am I not surprised? Finnigan, let me talk to Daddy.”

Finnigan was far too cross to look embarrassed by his slip-up. He marched the phone over to James. James took it from his hand; his sister looked annoyed, peaky, and utterly exhausted. He eyed the circles beneath her eyes critically with an elder brother’s concern.

“You’ve got to come home, Lulu,” he greeted.

“Look, I know, okay?” she said, irritable. “I’m trying to work it out, but if I take a break now, I’ll probably have to cancel my April trip, and I really don’t want to do that. I want to be there when Baby Lyra is born. I’m just going to tough it out for a few more months, and once I’m home, Scorpius can poke and prod me to his heart’s desire.”

“And be here for my birthday, right, Lulu? Right?” Finnigan said.

“…Right. And for Finnigan’s birthday,” Lily amended, humoring him.

“And your concert!!!” Finnigan added. “Are you sure it is for only ladies?”

“Positive.”

James wasn’t buying that excuse. “Lily, Uncle Charlie would help out again if you asked him. You’d only need to be here for a few days. I can get you a portkey; I’ll do whatever I have to do. You look awful.”

“I feel awful. I was in bed all day. It’s been more uncomfortable and boring than that time Caden and I slept with other people a few years back, and that’s saying something because that was a dull experience.”

“Can you _please_ refrain from saying things like that around my son?” James requested.

"He doesn't know what I meant," defended Lily.

From the background, he heard Caden’s voice chime in with: “ _Speak for yourself; I had a great time with Holly.”_

“You know, actually, I will come home. There’s a funeral I’ll have to go to soon. My boyfriend’s,” Lily grumbled.

Caden appeared in the frame. It was obvious whatever was wrong with Lily wasn’t environmental or contagious, because he looked extremely healthy and happy (the way Lily had looked before all this potion stuff began). “Will you make sure I get a proper headstone, James?”

James rolled his eyes in amusement. “Sure, Caden. I’ll buy it myself. I won’t let her bury you unmarked in my dad’s garden.”

“I’m sure your dad would love that, though.”

“Nah…well…maybe that time he caught you and Lily in an empty classroom when you were sixteen. On that day, yeah. I’m sure he would’ve _loved_ to have you six feet under his cabbages.” James snickered. While Caden was present, he decided to use that to his advantage. “Hey, you should, you know. Make your girlfriend get medical help. She looks awful.”

“Make her? _Make_ Lily?” Caden echoed back to James. He didn’t even have to say anything else.

“You’re right. Yep. You’re right,” James allowed. “…Persuade her however possible, then.”

“I’ve been trying. Believe me, I’ve been trying. You know how she is.”

“I am _right here_ ,” Lily snapped. Caden feigned shock and reached out to poke her cheek hesitantly, as if he thought she was a ghost.

“So you are!” he said.

She stuck her tongue out in response. James rolled his eyes.

“Nice to see she’s still got her moodiness,” he commented. “Lily, you need to contact Uncle Charlie, and I’ll get you a portkey for tomorrow at eight. How’s that?”

“Not going to happen. Nice talking to you, though.”

“Don’t you dare end our muggle call!” James warned, annoyed. “Charlie wouldn’t mind!”

“I mind! That would be the _third_ time he’s come here to save me! I don’t need him to save me! I can do it on my own!”

“You’re not well! Something could be seriously wrong with you, Lily!”

“And if I die, feel free to say ‘I told you so’ to my corpse. I’d like to be buried here in the dragon graveyard.”

With that, she flicked her hair over her shoulder and left the phone in Caden’s hands, probably to stamp off somewhere and throw something.

“I’ll work on it,” Caden told James. “I’ve found a Healer here who’s supposed to be getting in contact with Scorpius so they can exchange information…hopefully once this Healer is up to speed Lily can go see him.”

“Don’t let her die, okay? My parents would lose it.” _And me, but I’ll keep that to myself._

From somewhere in the background, Lily yelled: _“I’ll die if I want to, Jamie!”_

“I’ll do my best, though you know how she likes to tempt fate,” Caden promised, deaf to Lily’s outburst.  

“She’s always been that way,” James sighed, his mind flipping back to his childhood. He and his little sister got into so much trouble. It’s a wonder they’d made it to adulthood intact. _Speaking of naughty kids_ …James looked around his office, realizing all at once that Finnigan had been _suspiciously_ quiet for a few minutes. He spotted him sitting behind his desk, rummaging nosily through his drawers. He sighed. “I’m going to go deal with my son before he drinks ink.”

They said their goodbyes, James wrestled a pair of scissors from Finnigan before he could give himself a haircut, and then they met Nora and his mum and dad for lunch in Diagon Alley. They stopped by Hugo’s bakery afterwards; Finnigan and Henry nearly hyperventilated out of excitement when Hugo offered to take them into the back to ‘taste-test’ his vegan options. They came back out of the kitchens with a massive tray of every type of Finnigan-and-Henry-approved sweet offered. James and Nora resigned themselves to the excess sugar, chose one of the tables outside of the bakery, and sat down to have tea.

“Merlin…” Ginny muttered, her eyes on Finnigan as he crammed yet another chocolate into his mouth. James tried to control himself as much as possible, but he still ate nearly a fifth of what was on the tray himself as he told his parents and Nora all about his call with Lily.

“Scorpius is feeling so guilty about all of this,” Nora told them. She pulled Finnigan to her side and wiped the chocolate he’d somehow managed to get on his forehead off with a paper napkin. “He came by my office this morning and was really beating himself up over it.”

“There’s got to be a way to help her. If the potions changed her hormone levels, maybe she should go to see a muggle doctor and get them to help get her levels normal again. They have loads of drugs for that,” James suggested, remembering some of the medical knowledge he’d picked up from his and Nora’s muggle surrogacy classes.

“That’s what Scorpius wants to do once she’s back in London. He doesn’t trust the drugs the muggles use for that, but she clearly can’t go on feeling so poorly,” Nora said.

“It just doesn’t make any sense. The side effects lasted for three months _maximum_ during the trial runs, and the average length was one month,” Ginny said. She took a sip of tea and reclined back in her chair. She rubbed tiredly over her eyes. “And I know Lily followed every instruction that Scorpius gave her. So I just don’t understand why she’d _still_ be feeling like that when it should’ve stopped by now…unless…no, but she used…nah. Nevermind. I dunno, but she needs to get herself home.”

“Agreed,” Harry said. James read the stress on his dad easily, and he couldn’t blame him. He knew that if his youngest was on the other side of the world and suffering from some undiagnosed problem that he’d be a _mess_. Prompted by the surge of anxiety that that thought issued, James leaned over and pulled Delilah from the pram. He sat her in his lap and let her play with a silver spoon. Henry—sat happily in Ginny’s lap—picked up his grandmother’s spoon and leaned over the table, knocking his gently against Delilah’s. She giggled at the tinkling sound.

“Oh!” Nora said suddenly. She jumped. Everybody looked at her in concern. She winced and set her hands on her belly. “Sorry, just taken off guard. She’s been turning and moving so much today.”

“Harry’s got this,” Ginny promised. “He’s the Unborn Baby Whisperer, don't forget.”

“And that still sounds creepy, Gin,” Harry reminded her, but he leaned over Finnigan and rested a gentle hand atop Nora’s stomach anyway. He patted lightly. Nora laughed; James guessed the baby had indeed settled.

“Come on, how do you do that?” she asked.

“No idea,” Harry admitted honestly. He straightened. “It just works. No idea why.”

Nora stroked the side of her belly. She murmured something that everybody was thinking—or at least, James knew he was. “You’re so loved, Little Lyra.”

It was an undeniable fact, one that Nora’s growing discomfort and Lily’s continued sickness reiterated daily. So many people had given up so much to bring Lyra here (and were _still_ sacrificing). She was so longed for, so cherished, and she hadn’t even taken a breath yet. She was so lucky to be born into the family she was (and that was something James had known about himself, too, for as long as he could remember. He had always felt lucky, had always felt blessed).

“Let us take the kids,” Ginny offered a few moments later. James looked down at his sons—who were still cramming desserts into their mouth—skeptically.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Yes. We’ll collect Evra and Rory from school, too, and take them back to the Den for games and dinner. Have a night to yourselves.”

James glanced at Nora. She was biting her lip, clearly tempted by the offer, but unsure. James nodded her way, to show her that he was okay with it, and then he let her decide.

“If you’re _sure_ …” she trailed off.

“Positive. We’ve got this. Right, Harry?”

“Absolutely,” Harry smiled.

“Thanks, Mum and Dad,” James said.

He and Nora smiled and waved when they went their separate ways. As soon as the kids were out of sight, they turned to each other.

“Let’s go home and invite everybody over,” James said at once. His wife jumped up in excitement (quite adorably, in James's opinion). That had clearly been what she was thinking, too. she held up her hand and met James's in a hard high-five.

“Yes!! And if Clementine’s working we’re going to her office and dragging her and Louis out by their hair! Reunion night!”

James rubbed his hands together happily. “We can finally hear the full details of what happened on Roxanne’s blind date last week.”

“Oh _yeah_ ,” Nora remembered. "I can't wait to find out how she ended up sleeping on the roof!"

They headed home, gathered as many friends as possible, and had a wonderful night full of laughter and good food. And when James's parents dropped the kids off after dinner, their children were equally happy to be doted on and coddled by their excessive number of pseudo aunts and uncles. Everybody except Jacques slept over, and by midnight, James and Nora were weaving through their home, peeking into rooms, trying to pinpoint the exact location of their kids, who had all chosen different aunts and uncles to settle down with for the night. 

"Oh, here's Evra," James whispered.  He and Nora peeked into the first floor guest room (which had been Louis's room for a short time after graduation); their eldest was cuddled up between Louis and Clementine. Clem lowered her book and waved at them. 

"Goodnight," she whispered. 

"'Night," they chorused. They tiptoed to the bed, leaned over Louis (who was already fast asleep), and kissed Evra goodnight. They found Henry snoozing in Evvie's arms in Ben and Evvie's old room and Delilah snuggled up with Rory and Roxanne in another spare bedroom. They finally located Finnigan in their own room. He had taken advantage of the bedtime chaos: he was passed out in the middle of their bed surrounded by biscuit crumbs, stretched out like a starfish. James and Nora laughed tiredly.

"Not even surprised," James sighed. 

They readied themselves for bed, vanished the crumbs with their wands, James folded Finnigan's limbs in so that he and Nora would have adequate room on the bed, and then they climbed under the duvet. James reached over Finnigan's head and stroked Nora's shoulder. He yawned. 

"I love you," he said. 

"And I love you," she whispered back. She turned over onto her side to face him. He could barely see in the dim light, but he could just make out her smile, and it was the genuine sort that made her even more gorgeous than usual. She reached over Finnigan's head too, her forearm pressed against James's, and stroked his cheek. "I didn't realize how badly I needed a night like tonight until just now."

"Merlin, me too," he admitted. It had been so lovely to just be _James and Nora_ for a few hours. "I never thought I'd say this, but it was great to have a break from the baby talk. I love our niece, but I feel like so many of our social gatherings have been all about her lately." 

Nora groaned. "God, you're not kidding. How great was it to get to talk about actual young adult things instead of placentas and heartburn?"

"So great," he gushed. "I look forward to life getting back to normal."

"I look forward to the new normal," Nora said. 

That phrase-- the new normal-- sparked a fire in James's heart. He settled down to sleep, excited about the future, about meeting his niece, about the Potter family's growth. Excited about all the children their family had yet to meet, yet to love. Who would they be sharing their lives with a year from now? Two? Three? The realization that there was so much more to love, so many more babies to kiss and welcome into the world, so many more hearts to intertwine with their own was the most comforting thing James could imagine. 

"Me too."


	13. II. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily continues to deal with the repercussions of her decision to help Albus and Scorpius. Caden finds his patience tested in new ways. Back in England, Albus and Scorpius prepare for their daughter's arrival into the world, while James and Nora prepare to say goodbye.

“I don’t know. I think I like the lilac…” Aster trailed off thoughtfully. She lifted another color swatch up in front of her phone, so Lily could see the shade through hers. “What do you think?”

She thought she was going to be sick—and not because of Aster’s color choices. Lily felt a wave of vertigo crash into her. She dropped down abruptly to sit on the boulder she’d been leaning against. She set her phone face down on her lap and bowed over with a groan. She held her face in her hands and rocked for a moment, taking quick, shallow breaths, trying her hardest to fight against the urge to vomit. The pain in her stomach mounted with her lightheadedness.

“Lily? Are you all right? Is the lilac that bad? Okay, okay! I’ll go back to the coral! Lily, turn the phone back over!”

Lily leaned over, pressing her upper body against her thighs in hopes that the pressure against her torso would alleviate her discomfort, her breaths coming quicker with each second. She hid her face into her knees. She only barely registered the sound of her phone slipping from her lap and falling down into the grass beside her.

“No, no, no,” she moaned. But it was futile. The pain continued growing—until it was all she could think about, until she couldn’t even keep still and was reduced to rocking in place, feeling the pain climbing and climbing and—she parted her thighs and vomited right between her legs onto the grass beneath her. It was not a graceful upheaval; sick splattered her shoes, and even after she’d emptied her stomach’s contents, she kept dry heaving into the grass, every movement painful to her already strained muscles. And for somebody who lifted weights as part of her never-ending training, the fact that her muscles ached from _vomiting_ was a sore spot on her pride.

Her ears were still ringing and her head still throbbing when she heard a brawl break out between Opal—who’d been accompanying her on her early morning walk through the sanctuary—and the closest dragon. Lily shot back up to her feet and ran unsteadily towards the sound of the commotion, the taste of sick still sharp in her mouth.

“NO!” she shouted fiercely. She tried to mask her weakness, but her legs were shaking as she grew closer to Opal and the other dragon (a newly added adolescent). “Opal, _NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT_!”

She was ordinarily an expert at dodging flames, but because she felt so weak that collapsing felt imminent, her reflexes were just not up to par. The adolescent turned to face her by instinct—triggered by her threatening tone—and sent flames her way before she could even blink. Opal darted in front of her at the very last moment, even _more_ enraged than he’d been before, senseless in his newfound urge to protect her (an urge that had been a constant problem for the past few months.) If the dragons weren’t dueling each other in her presence, they were acting out towards any human that dared to approach her, dragon keeper or not. It was becoming a serious concern.

Lily jumped between the two dragons, her arms outstretched, and it was only then that they calmed down. After huffing smoke at each other irritably, the adolescent turned and settled down into the grass. His posture was tense, but at least he’d submitted.

“That is _enough_!” Lily told Opal. She was unfairly angry with him, and she was sane enough to recognize that, but she was so frustrated that she felt close to tears. She glared at Opal. “You are not helping!”

Opal huffed again, smoke billowing from his nostrils indignantly.

“The new dragon is not going to hurt me! See?” Lily walked over and patted the dragon’s scales. He shifted over onto his side, giving her more access to his scaled belly. He still had fresh scars from the last place he’d been; Lily was careful to stroke him very softly over those places. She looked sternly at Opal. “Are you okay now? He’s _not_ a threat. Well, not to me, at least.”

Opal was clearly still stressed, but he was intelligent enough to see that Lily was in no present danger with the adolescent lying in such a submissive position. Opal shuffled forward—a bit sheepishly, Lily thought—and nudged her gently with his snout.

“What?” Lily muttered, annoyed. He nudged her again. “I’m not going back to the office.” Another nudge. “You’re an animal and I don’t have to listen to—hey!”

Opal caught her off guard by slamming his nose into her knees. Her legs gave out from beneath her, but before she could hit the ground, Opal slid his head beneath her and caught her on his neck. Lily latched her arms around his scales and clung for dear life.

“My pocket phone is still down there!” she complained, but Opal clearly didn’t give a shit about her pocket phone. She’d felt a bit better after vomiting, but soaring so quickly through the air made her start to feel icky again. _Great_.

Opal dropped her down into his nest atop her office hut. She didn’t exactly want to nap in a bed of rotting animal furs and shiny objects, but Opal flew off before she could order him to fly her to the ground. Lily rolled out of the massive nest and sat on the flat roof instead. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Fucking fabulous,” she muttered to herself. “Abducted by my own dragon.” She lowered her forehead to her knees with a sigh. After taking a few moments to settle her stomach, she cast a cushioning charm, closed her eyes, and stepped off the edge of the roof. She landed softly on the ground below just in time to greet Mia.

“Good morning,” Mia said, surprised. She glanced up at the roof. “What were you doing up there?”

Because she’d _never_ admit that her own dragon had kidnapped her, she said: “Enjoying the sunrise.”

Mia furrowed her brow. “You look _awful_.”

She _felt_ awful. When she thought about working the rest of her thirteen-hour shift, her eyes burned. She’d thrown up twice today and it wasn’t even lunch. But what was the alternative? Staying home _again_? It had all gotten so much worse. Since July, she’d been dealing with a collection of discomforts, but it had never been this bad. The new year had greeted her with the addition of vomiting, fainting, and extremely unattractive bloating. She’d had to go back to barrier methods the day after New Year’s Day because she kept vomiting her contraceptive potion right up. And to make matters worse, the dragons’ behavior had worsened with her health. She was, in all honesty, in misery.

“Lily? Do you want me to call a healer?” Mia asked, her voice full of concern.

“No, I—oh, fuck, I’d go inside if I were you,” Lily said, her eyes on Topaz. He was charging towards them, and it didn’t look particularly friendly. Mia immediately jumped back, putting space between her and Lily. Topaz fell short and let out a warning growl. Mia didn’t waste any time.

“Could you be pregnant?”

Lily’s stomach turned over. Trepidation overtook her. She didn’t even want to _hear_ the word; it felt like a curse. “No!”

“Because there’s been extensive research on how dragons behave around ill handlers and it’s nothing like this. One thing that _hasn’t_ been studied is how they react around pregnant handlers. And the way they react around you reminds me of their behavior around their eggs,” she persisted.

“And I’m sure I do smell pregnant to them. I’ve got all the right sorts of hormones. But I’ve felt like this…well, close to it, anyway…since July, and I can’t have been pregnant since July; I’d be massive right now.”

“But—”

“No! Merlin, don’t even say it, okay?!” she snapped. “I’m not. I’m _not_!”

She didn’t like Mia’s skeptical look. She crossed her arms weakly.

“I’m going inside to do some paperwork.”

“Okay. Feel better,” Mia said. Her smile was innocent enough on the surface, but Lily knew her well enough by now to know from her peculiar eye glint that she was up to something. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the energy to pursue it.

She rested her head on her desk and drifted in and out of sleep for the next hour or so. Opal kept sticking his head into the window and blowing smoke rings at her, and Lily eventually got so annoyed that she actually shut the window to lock him out. Opal’s wounded eyes made her heart ache, but she was far too exhausted to do much about it. She just needed a nap. She needed a nap and a few moments free from the nausea and the exhaustion and the dizziness and…could Mia be right? Even indulging the thought felt like a jinx. Lily had avoided thinking or saying the word for weeks, horrified by a nagging feeling that’d haunted her since she’d started having symptoms like these (even if she knew, realistically, that they had to be from the potions), a feeling that told her thinking it would make it real. And it couldn’t be real. She didn’t know much, but she knew that. It was just the potions, like it’d been from the start. She had done exactly what Scorpius told her to do. She’d responsibly used the barrier methods far past when he said to with absolutely no slip-ups. She didn’t stop until Scorpius said it was okay to, and even then she’d made him send an even stronger contraception potion to her, just to be safe. She’d taken that _every damn day, twice a day_ , up until her vomiting began full force and she couldn’t keep the potions down. So there was no way she was pregnant; there was no time she could’ve gotten pregnant and she definitely hadn’t been pregnant before all of this started. She was paranoid and tired. That was all. Paranoid and tired and _poisoned_.

She drifted in and out of sleep with her head still pressed to her desk. She knew she needed to get up and go do something productive, but she couldn’t get herself to function. She couldn’t remember ever being so tired. Not even before Uncle Charlie had sent those three keepers and two dragonologists her way, when she was working nearly day-long shifts with no chance for sleep. She was still lying against her desk, desperately fighting against sleep, when she heard Mia’s voice drifting towards her from outside the thin walls of the hut. And she wasn’t alone. Lily felt a shock pierce through her at the familiar voice; she shot up, dazed and panicked, and bolted towards the hut door. She flung it open and leaned against the doorframe as another wave of vertigo washed over her. Mia and Caden stopped short just outside of the hut.

“Fuck, you _do_ look ill,” Caden greeted. He left Mia’s side and walked up towards Lily. She felt her heart squeeze as Opal and Topaz both approached.

“Caden, what are you doing here?! You can’t come here! The dragons nearly killed Ivan for hugging me last week, I _told you_ to stay off the property, even Topaz and Opal can’t be trusted right now! I can’t…I can’t keep…”

She trailed off as Topaz and Opal landed beside him, their postures everything but aggressive. Topaz nudged Caden’s hair with his snout. Opal rumbled contentedly as Caden leaned over and patted his shoulder. Her boyfriend arched an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah. They seem very…out of control?” He gave both dragons a final pat and walked up to join her in the hut’s doorway. He drew her into a hug. Lily blinked into his jacket, confused and deeply unsettled by every second they went unroasted. She relaxed into his embrace automatically as his hand rubbed firmly at her back. She took a deep breath. _Okay. It’s fine. Those two just really love Caden. Maybe the dragons are over it all. Maybe they finally realized they’re acting ridiculous._

“Lily,” one of her new keepers—temporarily sent over from Romania—greeted, “I changed Cobalt’s bandages but he’s still oozing bright purple pus—oh no—!”

Mia let out an alarmed shout, and by the time Lily pulled out of Caden’s embrace, her new keeper, Ava, had flattened herself to the ground as Opal and Topaz fired at her, clearly unhappy with her increasing proximity to Lily. Lily and Mia both hurried over; Lily patted Topaz’s snout and stared sternly into his eyes while Mia tried to calm Opal.

“Okay, yeah, I see what you mean,” Caden allowed.

The dragons let Ava go sit by _him_ , but Lily was certain that they’d lash out again if Ava approached _her_. Lily was out of breath and even more confused as she leaned tiredly against Opal’s scales and watched the two chat, both unfazed by the recent attack on Ava’s life. Lily stroked Opal until he settled down, Mia got Topaz to break his intense eye contact with Ava before it escalated, and then they glanced at each other. Mia didn’t have to say a word. They both knew very well what this reminded them of. When dragons protected their eggs, they protected the nest from anyone and everyone that might wander up, no matter what. Except for the mate. Even if they weren’t bonded to the mate, even if they’d met them one time before they procreated, they _always_ let the dragon who’d fathered wander up to the nest.

_Fuck._

* * *

 

She was distracted through lunch and too ill to eat much anyway, so when Ivan entered the hut and told her Cobalt needed to be looked at, she was actually glad to leave. She kissed Caden briefly and hurried from her office. She surgically drained Cobalt’s leg wound—it was obtained while he was still in the wild; they were planning on bringing him back to health and letting him go again—and then rubbed healing cream deep into the recesses of his torn flesh. He stood there patiently with only the slightest grumble, never daring to lash out at her, even though he’d nearly scalped one of their keepers earlier. She guessed the dragons’ protectiveness did have a few perks.

“There you are,” she said gently. She pulled her hand from his wound and wiped the blood, pus, and healing cream off on a nearby towel. She used a cleaning charm afterwards. Cobalt gave a pained whimper as he settled down on the ground. Lily leaned over him and stroked his neck. “I know. I’m going to get you some pain potion right now, I promise. You’re a good dragon. A very, very good dragon.”

She somehow managed to run all the way to the storage shed and back despite her nausea. She settled the cauldron she’d levitated in front of her down at Cobalt’s side. She sank a large, shallow bowl into it, filling it to the top with potion, and then walked over and offered it to him. Ordinarily, he was difficult about taking his potions, but this time he lapped it up eagerly, clearly in a lot of pain. His wound had already been festering by the time he was brought to them. Lily was doing the best she could, but she was starting to worry that he’d lose his leg (and if he did, he’d never get to be free again.)

Lily sat in front of him after he’d drained the bowl. She patted his snout. He looked at her with probing eyes, eyes so full of meaning that Lily longed to understand him. She knew her dragons had such rich inner lives, with so many thoughts and feelings, and she wished she was privy to them.

But then again, maybe a few of them were pricks. Maybe it was best that they _couldn’t_ speak.

“It’s going to be okay,” she promised him, and as she did, her voice shook. She stroked his face, her movements becoming a bit nervous. “There are loads of ways to deal with this. It’ll be okay.”

He seemed to trust her. But he had formed a very quick bond with her; she’d been the one to receive him—trembling and horrifically injured—from the dragon catcher. She’d been the first human to help him instead of hurt him. So he probably would have trusted anything she said.

“It will. I’ll figure it all out,” she said again, and as he closed his eyes with a contented hum, she wished she trusted herself even half as much as Cobalt did.

* * *

She lived the next week in a constant state of mild panic. She was too afraid to confirm or deny her suspicions, so she went through her days and tried to stay busy as possible. Unfortunately, that method of denial didn’t quite work. She was so ill that she could hardly function for vast portions of each day. It was easy to hide it at work—because everybody knew to stay away when she was with dragons, so if she stayed with dragons every second of every day, she was essentially isolated from people every second of every day—but it was impossible to hide it at home. Every day she was met with pleas to go to some Healer only a few minutes away, and by the end of the work week, she realized that her illness was taking its toll on Caden, too. And that wasn’t what she wanted. So on Friday morning, before they’d even gotten out of bed for the day, she relented.

“If I don’t feel better by Sunday, I’ll go next week.”

His eyes were shadowed with concern and exhaustion. She’d been ill all night and had kept the both of them up. “You need to go today. You should’ve gone weeks ago. The healer is up to date on what Scorpius gave you. She can help.”

Lily had tried her hardest to keep her distance from Caden, but when she felt poorly, she wanted to be beside him most of all. She let herself shuffle over into his arms. She pressed her cheek to the smooth skin covering his heart as his fingers pulled through her hair. From the floor beside the bed, Big Boy made a pathetic whining sound, the kind he’d begun giving to manipulate his way up onto the bed.

“Doesn’t work with me, Big Boy,” Lily reminded the dragon, her words muffled against Caden’s skin. Caden laughed weakly and kissed her shoulder.

“Next week?”

“Yes. Next week,” she agreed, even though the thought was making her heart beat out of her chest.

“Do I need to escort you to the hospital hand-in-hand? Will you do a runner?”

“Oh, shut up,” Lily muttered.

She enjoyed the sensation of his fingers pulling through her hair for a few more moments.

“I wish you hadn’t done it,” he said suddenly. He didn’t need to clarify. Lily knew what he meant.

“I feel that way nearly all day everyday as well,” Lily agreed bitterly. “Had I known I’d be _this_ ill…”

She trailed off darkly. Unless her paranoid suspicions were confirmed, she was still fully blaming everything on those potions. All she knew was that she had been fine before them. She’d been happy and insanely healthy. And once she took them, everything went sharply downhill, and it only seemed to be digging further and further down.

And she knew, if she _was_ what she feared, it would be the potions’ fault, as well. But she couldn’t even indulge that thought for long at all.

She had no energy for a morning shag and hardly enough to get up and have tea. She waved as Caden left a bit reluctantly for work. She drank her tea and got her clothes off the clothes horse, her every movement weighed down with fatigue. She stepped into her customary work jeans and tugged them up. It wasn’t until she’d gone to button them and found that the pinching tightness she’d been experiencing had turned into a genuine inability to button them _at all_ that she panicked. She ended up lying on the floor, sucking in her gut as far as possible, trying her hardest to get the jeans to latch. After rolling around and fighting with the article of clothing for ten minutes, she gave up. She left them unbuttoned, tugged the rest of her clothes on, and walked over to the counter. She lifted her newly-recovered pocket phone up from the charging station and paced the tiles with it in her hand, debating over whether or not to make the call. Saying anything out loud would make it feel more real. But she wasn’t sure she could live like this anymore—with the worries festering inside of her like an infection—and she knew, if she was, that she’d need to find out in time to deal with it.

She took a deep breath, mustered every scrap of bravery, and rang Aster. It was dinner time there, and she knew Aster was having a Granger-Weasley family dinner, so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t pick up, but it still made her heart lurch.

“Hey. I really need you to ring me back. I’m losing my mind here and I need you. If you’re still at my aunt and uncle’s, can you make some excuse to leave the room? _Please_ ring me.”

She left her message, set the phone on the counter, and then paced uneasily to the bathroom. She tugged her jeans down and lifted her shirt. She squinted her eyes and turned to the side. She knew she was probably imagining it—she was probably just paranoid—but she swore she looked larger than she had even yesterday. Her abdomen was bloated enough now that she could see the swell when she turned to the side.  She’d been feeling bloated for a while, but that was one of the side effects to that stupid, bloody potion. _This,_ however, seemed different.

“You need to give up fried foods,” Beatrice told her bluntly.

Lily glared at the mirror. “Fuck off, Beatrice.” Aside from her insult, Beatrice’s observation panicked her. “You think I look bigger?”

“I can’t lie to you. The mirror doesn’t lie, Lily. I recommend limiting your daily caloric intake to—”

“Oh, who asked you?!” Lily spat.

“You did. You _just_ asked me…”

Lily was considering hanging a curtain in front of Beatrice when she heard her pocket phone begin ringing from the kitchen. She tugged her clothes back up, hurried from the bathroom, and snatched the phone up. She answered at once.

“Lily? What’s wrong?” Aster asked urgently. She was whispering; Lily guessed she’d retreated to the bathroom to make her call. “Is everything okay?”

“No. It’s not okay,” Lily admitted. Her eyes burned fiercely. She felt a strong wave of terror crash over her; she leaned against the counter and bowed her head. “Aster, I think I might be pregnant.”

“Oh, _fuck_!” Aster breathed, her words drenched in equal horror. “Lily, why?! You need to take a deep breath! You’re probably just panicking! You’ve been having those symptoms since July!”

“They’re worse now and my dragons are acting really odd and I can’t _button my fucking jeans_!” Lily exploded. Her chest felt oddly tight and she was having a difficult time inhaling fully. “I started vomiting just after Christmas when it’d been just nausea before that and we stopped that bloody barrier spell on Caden’s birthday in October because Scorpius said it was _totally safe_ and we didn’t use the spell again until right after the New Year and I always took my contraceptive potions but what if the potions didn’t work like they were supposed to? What if I’ve still been ridiculously fertile this entire time?! Aster, I don’t know what to do. I shouldn’t have listened to Scorpius. I think I knew this deep down, I think that’s why I stayed with the barriers for so long, but it was getting so tedious and Scorpius seemed _so sure_ that it was perfectly safe to stop and…and…Aster, what do I do?”

Tears formed in her eyes. She was glad that Aster couldn’t see her.

“Oh, Merlin,” Aster said, equally panicked. “Okay. Let’s not…panic. Okay. Period?”

“It’s been missing since all this started in July.”

“Okay. Fuck. Okay. Uh…” Lily knew Aster was trying to think up everything she knew about pregnancy. “Do your tits hurt?”

“Since fucking July!!”

“I see your dilemma. Okay. There are two possibilities. Either the potion has just been messing everything up for so long that everything is _horribly_ off balance now, which is why you’re getting worse, or…”

“Oh, no, don’t even say it,” Lily begged.

“Or you’ve got a big problem. Either way, get your arse to a healer _now_.”

“No. No way. I can’t do that alone.” Even the thought made her feel sicker than she already felt.

“Do you or do you not have a loving boyfriend there with you?” Aster reminded her sharply. There was a pause. “Oh, fuck, _please_ don’t tell me you two ended things?!”

“No! No, we didn’t, but I can’t take him! I can’t even tell him this is what I’m worried about! Because you know what he’s going to do, Aster, he’s going to want to talk about it, and I can’t talk about it yet, I can’t even acknowledge that it’s a possibility, and I need _you_ here to panic with me and—and—” Lily broke off and groaned as her nausea swelled again. “I’m so fucking tired of this!”

“Okay, but maybe _I’m_ not the person you _need_ to help you with this because we’re just panicking and maybe it’d be better to be with somebody who can calmly talk it out with you—”

“No! I’m so far from that right now! I’m two seconds away from hyperventilating! I can’t talk about dragon shite!”

“Me too! I am, too!” Aster admitted. “Lily, if you won’t go see a healer, you’ve got to get a potion and find out at home! Get one. Bring it back there. Ring me. We’ll do it over the mirror-chat.”

Lily blinked against her tears. “I don’t want to.”

“You don’t have a bloody choice. You have to know for sure and you know it,” Aster said sternly. Her tough love approach typically worked, and it was no less effective this time. Lily knew she was right. “I’ll make an excuse to run back to the flat. Is a half-hour enough time to get the potion?”

“Yes,” she admitted. She realized her hands were shaking; she smoothed her damp palms against her top and took a deep breath. Suddenly, she wanted her mum more than anything else. “I want my mum.”

“I can tell her to ring you—”

“No! No. _She’ll_ want to talk about it even _more_ than Caden would. Or, well, she’ll be much pushier about it and—I’ll ring you in a half-hour, okay?”

“Okay. It’ll be fine, Lily!” The nervous laugh Aster gave afterwards was _not_ convincing. “Inconvenient, but there are loads of options.”

Lily inhaled deeply. “Right. You’re right. I’ll try to remember that. Talk to you soon.”

She let her staff know she’d be in later that afternoon (thankfully Mia and another borrowed dragonologist were already scheduled to work that day) and apparated to the apothecary. She had to double over and breathe through her sickness and vertigo right afterwards, but thankfully, she avoided vomiting her tea back up all over the pavement. She entered the shop and made straight for the women’s health section. After choosing the correct potion, she approached the till. She avoided eye contact with the girl handling the transaction: her nametag read _HOPE_ in cheery block lettering.

“Here you go,” she said happily. She passed Lily the bag, her change, and then patted her hand. “Make sure to follow the enclosed instructions. Good luck!”

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake._ Lily managed a half grimace, half smile and left the apothecary quickly. She got sick after apparating back and was a few minutes late ringing Aster, but Aster was loyal to her core and was still waiting patiently when Lily finally did ring.

“There you are! Everything okay? Did you take it without me?” Aster worried. They switched their call so they could see each other through the phone. Lily eyed her longest friend and wished they were actually together; she could’ve used Aster’s hand patting her shoulder and the comforting smell of her perfume. She’d have to do it alone, though.

“Sorry, got sick when I got back. All over the kitchen table. Do you think I should throw it out? Does _anything_ ever really come out of wood? I feel like wood just sucks in and absorbs everything…”

“Lily. Stop procrastinating. I’m _dying_ here,” Aster scolded. “Worry about the kitchen table later.”

Lily’s heart began hammering at once. “I’m scared,” she admitted.

“I know. I’m scared for you, too,” Aster said. “But you’ve got to know, Lily. You can’t deal with it until you know. And whether you like it or not, if you just refuse to deal with it, if you _are…_ the baby will _still_ —”

“Do _not_ say that word!” Lily yelped. She felt like something hard had shoved her heart into the pit of her stomach. She fell down onto the sofa and took one of the pillows, bringing it over to press it to her stomach, in hopes it’d alleviate her nausea. She wasn’t even sure if it was from physical or emotional causes at this point. “Don’t.”

“Sorry,” Aster said at once. “But I’m right and you know it. Open the box?”

“Fine.”

As she set up the potion, she had a feeling that she already knew what it’d say. Her fingers trembled. Weeks and weeks of denial clogged her mind to the point that she had difficult time focusing on any one thought. Why did she do this? Run from things like this? Why couldn’t she just handle things the way everybody else did? Though, to be fair, she’d never done anything the way anybody else did in her entire life. Why should complicated emotional issues be any different?

“Okay,” Lily said. She sat back weakly and set her hands on her lap. She took a deep breath against her pounding heart. She felt weak with anxiety. “Okay. It says I’ve just got to take a sip, hold it in my mouth, and spit it back in the glass. After thirty seconds to a minute, it’ll start sparkling if I am… _ugh_. Oh, fuck, I think I’m going to be sick…”

She doubled over and waited for the pain to pass.

“Will you move the instructions closer so I can read them, too?” Aster requested, once Lily had straightened back up. “There’s more there.” Lily moved them closer to the phone. Aster leaned in and read through them. “Okay. All right. Any moment now. Right now. Lily, pick up the glass. Just take one sip. You can do it. Lily. Lift up the damn glass—!”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Lily exploded, her entire body trembling with adrenaline and fear. In a rush of panic and desperate bravery, she leaned forward, snatched the glass up, and brought it to her lips. Her hands were shaking so much that some of the potion sloshed out onto her thighs as she took a small sip. She slammed it down on the table and leaned back against the couch weakly, her heartbeat loud in her head. She held the potion in her mouth for ten seconds, leaned forward again, and spat it back into the glass. She held her breath and dug her nails into her thighs. She didn’t even have the chance to panic and look away; within five seconds of spitting back into the glass, it began sparkling like mad. Multicolored, glittery clouds shot up towards the ceiling. Lily had never seen it do that before, and she’d seen Nora take this potion with positive results twice.

“Oh no,” she heard Aster breathe.

“What?! What the fuck does that mean?!” Lily demanded. She reached for the instruction book with quivering hands. Her palms were so damp with sweat that the thin pages stuck to her skin. “I’ve never seen it do that before! It’s supposed to take thirty seconds! What does it mean when it does it that quickly?!”

Her frantic search through the instruction book ended moments later with the sound of the door opening.  

“Lil? You home?” asked Caden. She heard the sound of his keys settling on the counter. She and Aster met wide, panicked eyes as his footsteps drew nearer. Lily shoved the pamphlet into the sofa cushions, shoved the box beneath the sofa—

“I went by the sanctuary but they said you weren’t feeling well so I brought some ginger tea and—”

The second before he stepped into the living room, Lily acted on instinct. She snatched the sparkling glass up and downed the entire contents before he could see the glittering surface.

“ _No_!” Aster shrieked, horrified. Caden stepped fully into the room and furrowed his brow. Lily felt the potion reacting inside of her body. It obviously wasn’t made to be consumed. She choked as she felt the potion begin to spark inside of her stomach. She felt it burning and climbing up her throat. She shot off the sofa and bolted past Caden, running straight to the toilet. She shoved her fingers as far down her throat as they’d go and vomited up the still-glittering potion. Distantly, she heard Aster doing her best to keep Caden from following after her. She weaved some lie about a new potion Scorpius had sent for her nausea.

“Yeah, and it’s supposed to make her vomit at once so that she’ll feel less nauseated, ‘cause you know when you vomit and then you feel better for a while right afterwards…” Aster trailed off and gave a suspiciously nervous laugh.

“I guess. But it’s not like she’s not vomiting all the time already. I dunno, it just seems like a bad remedy, but I guess I’m not a healer.”

“Nope. You’re not. Leave the healing stuff to the experts,” Aster agreed.

“I’ll go check on her. Hang on a moment, okay? I want to talk to you about the wedding; I’ve got an idea for Hugo’s stag night.”

“Er…I’m sure she’ll be out in a moment! Stay here, tell me your idea. She’s fine. She’s coming back. Right, Lily?! _Right_?!”

Lily answered Aster’s pleading shouts. She flushed the toilet, cleaned herself up, and then she reentered the living room.

“I’m fine,” she said at once, silencing Caden’s concerned glance with a stern one of her own. She walked over and sat beside him a bit stiffly. She crossed her arms and tried to settle her racing heart. She wished he didn’t know her so well.

“You don’t look it. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said shortly.

“And you’re lying to me. Great.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’m just fucking tired and I feel _horrible_ and I’m sick of this.” Her eyes seared with tears. She looked away, embarrassed.

“That’s all you’ve got to say,” he told her. He sounded patient enough, but Lily could hear annoyance lurking beneath that. He stood a second later. “I’ll get you some tea. That okay?”

Lily felt guilt work its way into her heart. She slumped back against the cushions and rubbed her aching stomach.

“Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m going to take Aster with me so I can tell her my stag night ideas.” He lifted Lily’s phone and carried it with him into the kitchen. Lily thought hearing them talk about normal things would calm her, but instead, it made the feeling of dread in her heart worse. Aster’s wedding was in May. What would her life look like in May? No matter what she decided, no matter what she did, her life was probably going to be different forever. And there was nothing she could do about it. The emotions she was feeling—desperation, helplessness, frustration, anger—were some of the hardest for her to cope with, because they ultimately made her feel weaker than ever. She struggled to keep her tears at bay as Aster and Caden chatted about venues and menus and everything that _she_ should’ve been helping Aster with. She had promised to be the best Maid of Honor there was, but she’d spent the past few months only partially available, thanks to a busy schedule and never-ending illness. She wanted—more than anything—to stop letting down the people she loved. She’d been doing so much better at that goal, too. But here she was again, neglecting her friendships, shoving Caden away, fighting back tears to the point of misery when there were two people in the kitchen who wanted nothing more than to be there for her. It was just too much to deal with, and somehow, she felt opening up about it right now would be harder than this—choking on her sadness alone in the living room. She didn’t want to talk about it. She hadn’t even wrapped her head around it. And maybe she wasn’t…that. Maybe it was just the hormones in her body again, maybe _that’s why_ the potions had sparkled so quickly and urgently. She wanted to dig the instruction book out from the cushions and try to troubleshoot what her potion had done, but she was too afraid they’d walk back into the living room at any moment. There was only one thing to do.

“Here you go,” Caden said. He walked over and passed the tea to her with the handle out. Lily grasped it and brought it up to her lips. She took a small sip. With the steam wafting over her burning eyes, she said: “You can set up an appointment for me with that lady healer.”

Caden paused. “Seriously? I thought you wanted to wait until next week, to see if you feel better?”

“Not anymore.”

He sat down beside her. “Do you want me to ask off work so I can go with you?

Lily considered that. “I dunno. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. I’m going to go make an appointment before you change your mind.”

“Good idea,” Aster told him.

He left to visit his contact at the hospital. Aster met Lily’s eyes.

“You’ll have to tell him before the appointment if he goes with you. It’s not fair to shock him like that.”

“I think maybe I’m not,” Lily said. Even to her ears, it sounded pathetic. “I bet it’s just my hormones making it read positive.”

“I don’t think it works like that, Lily. It’s not a muggle test.”

“Yeah, but you saw it. It didn’t work right. It must be defective. It sparkled _immediately_.”

“Lily…” Aster trailed off.

“What? I’m not in denial; it _could_ be a false-positive! It really could be! I can’t tell him this and freak him out when there’s a good chance it’s not even accurate.”

Aster looked horrified. “You didn’t finish reading the instructions. It’s supposed to spark that quickly under certain circumstances.”

Lily stared at her warily. “I didn’t see that. Where did it say that?”

“At the very bottom. Look again.”

Skeptically, Lily dug the book out from between the cushions. She opened it and scanned her eyes down to the section on wait times.

_ Interpreting your results:  _

**_My potion never sparked. What does this mean?  
_ ** _A potion that fails to spark within the sixty-second window is a negative pregnancy result._

 ** _My potion sparked after thirty seconds. What does this mean?_  
** _A potion that reacts within the thirty-to-sixty second window is a positive result for a single pregnancy._

 ** _My potion sparked before thirty seconds elapsed. What does this mean?_  
** _A potion that reacts before thirty seconds indicates a positive multiple pregnancy._

Lily’s reaction was the fling the instruction book across the room.

“You’ve got to be _kidding me_!” she exploded. “Aster, there is _no fucking way_! That _proves_ it’s a false positive brought on by my fucked up body! There is no bloody way!”

Aster was less convinced. She eyed Lily nervously. “The potions you took in July…the entire purpose of them was to make you ovulate multiple eggs at once, right? So they could get a few out? And choose the healthiest ones?”

Lily felt faint. “I—yes, but—but—”

“You have to talk to Caden. The healer is going to want to do a scanning spell. You can’t just let him suddenly see two or more ba—”

“He won’t! He won’t because—because I’m going to handle this! Before then, okay?!” Lily was finding it difficult to think straight. She knew she was genuinely hysterical now. “I’m going to take a termination potion just in case and end this entire problem. It won’t hurt me if I’m not. I’m going now! Right now! And—and then, when I’m at the healer’s, we can focus on figuring out how to _not_ make me super fucking fertile for the rest of my life—oh, fuck, Aster. What if I’ll be like this for the rest of my life?!”

The prospect of living the rest of her days like this—nauseated, weak, moody, liable to get pregnant with multiples at any moment—was so depressing that Lily wanted to curl beneath her covers and never leave. She felt so much regret. For the first time in her life, she was angry with Scorpius. She had trusted him with her life—literally. And she felt so let down. She had offered to give him a child. She had _not_ agreed to get back what she’d given twofold (or, Merlin forbid, threefold).

“You need to calm down and talk to Caden about this—”

“No! I will not fucking calm down! I won’t! Nothing about this is—bloody—calming! This wasn’t supposed to happen! And I’ve got to take care of it before this situation gets even more out of control!”

The knowledge that there could be _multiple_ fetuses inside of her was choking. As she shoved her shoes back on and prepared to depart, Aster tried her hardest to talk sense into her.

“Lily Luna Potter! Stop being an idiot and think for a second! You’re just going to take that potion without even having a two-minute conversation with him about it?!”

“Yeah. I am! We never planned on this so I’ll deal with it and he doesn’t need to concern himself with it at all! I’m not letting this ruin everything that I’ve worked so hard to get! And I mean both him and my job!”

“Yeah, maybe I’m being a bit soft, but I think running off and doing this without even talking to him will ruin things with him. As in, without a doubt, Lily.”

“He doesn’t have to know.”

“For fuck's sake, do you hear yourself?! You’re going to keep this a secret for the rest of your time with him? Seriously?”

“I could.”

“No, you couldn’t! You’re not thinking clearly!”

“I am fucking thinking clearly! I am! I—Aster, I don’t know what to do!” At once, she broke down into terrified sobs that she’d hardly felt building. Aster fell quiet. Lily sank back down onto the sofa weakly and pressed her face into her hands as she cried. Right then, she was certain she’d never felt more trapped. There was no good answer to this. It was so unexpected, so unwanted, that all she could think about was backing out of the corner she’d been pressed into. She wasn’t thinking about the long term. She wasn’t thinking about anybody but herself. To her, it felt like being held at wandpoint, and the only important thing right now was escaping this situation as quickly as possible. She could clean up the wounds she got in the process of escaping later.

“I know it feels scary, but there are loads of different things you can do,” Aster reminded her. “You can have it or you can get rid of it. You can have it but give it away for adoption or you can have it and keep it. But what you _can’t do_ is shut down and refuse to make a decision. And you also can’t run off in a panic without thinking it through or talking with him. You haven’t even been to the healer yet.”

Lily wiped at her cheeks and looked up. She couldn’t see Aster—the phone was lying flat on the table—but she knew she was probably tearing up with Lily. “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to tell Caden about this if I’m going to end up getting rid of it! Because what if he wants it deep down and resents me? What if it breaks his heart? What if it makes him want to be with somebody else, somebody who’d cry with joy to suddenly find themselves pregnant?”

“You’re panicking and that’s why you’re thinking like that. He’d want to be there for you. This isn’t _your problem_ , Lily. It’s a joint problem, his and yours. He should have to carry some of the stress, too. It shouldn’t all be on you.”

“But it is all on me, isn’t it?” Lily challenged. She lowered her shaking hands. “Because I’m the one who has spent weeks vomiting my guts up. I’m the one who’d have to quit the job that I worked so hard to get. I’m the one who’d have to change who I am and how I live.”

“I know that. And of course you can do whatever you want to do and you _should_. But I just meant that you should talk about it and let him support you no matter what you decide. If you push him away, it’s going to reopen all the wounds you two already healed, and that would break my heart, Lily.”

Her nausea was growing again and Aster words made her even more upset.

“I just can’t deal with this right now,” she admitted thickly. She felt ill and suddenly all she wanted was to sleep. “I’ll ring you tomorrow, okay?”

Before Aster could argue, she ended the call. She curled up on her side on the sofa, and as she cried, she got the feeling that she was mourning something she hadn’t yet lost.

* * *

 

For the following week, she harbored the secret in suffering silence and went through a violent, dizzying array of emotions. Sometimes, she felt like she’d been dramatic before and that this wasn’t as life-shattering as she’d thought. She felt like there were very clear, viable options, ones that she could talk to Caden about, ones that would work. Other times, she felt inconsolable. In a strange way, she felt like her life was ending, like no matter what she decided, she would never again be the person she once was. And that was very hard to take. No matter what her outlook on the situation was, it remained that it was incredibly stressful for her and one that she had no interest in dealing with. Unfortunately, she was running out of time. Her appointment was that coming Friday. She spent her weekend withdrawn and moody, and during the first part of the week, she stayed at work for as long as possible so she could avoid having to lie by omission to Caden. But he was planning on accompanying her to the healer’s office, and there would be no hiding it then.

On Thursday, she returned to the apothecary. She stood in front of the locked cabinet holding the potion that would physically eliminate her dilemma. She read the regulations surrounding the potion that were pasted to the door—she’d have to take it here under supervision of a potioneer, she’d have to have somebody come pick her up afterwards, she’d have to provide her healer’s name—and after she’d read through the rules six times she turned to the government pamphlets left sitting atop the cabinet. They outlined all the new programs the government had instated to provide incentive for those without lime pox to reproduce. They’d established paid leave for both mum and dad for three entire years, free childcare—both private and public options—for the baby’s entire childhood, free parenting classes, counseling, baby clothes, furniture…basically, anything one needed. They were clearly desperate. But then again, so was she. And anyway, the magical population situation didn’t cause her any guilt when she considered terminating the pregnancy because she had already done her duty to help the population crisis; she’d given her brothers her lime pox-free egg, hadn’t she?

There was still a part of her that wanted terribly to just take the potion without saying a word to anybody. It would’ve been so simple in so many ways. But Aster was right. She couldn’t hope to keep a secret like that forever (and she very much wanted to be with Caden forever.) She didn’t want to live the rest of her life with this weighing on her shoulders. If she was going to escape this situation, it needed to be a clean escape, one where she didn’t have any guilt or uncertainties lingering so she could move on. She didn’t need to trap herself in the process of trying to regain freedom.

She purchased another pregnancy test and a potion specifically for pregnancy-related nausea, in the hopes it would provide even slight relief. She’d tried it in August with poor results, but she hadn’t been pregnant in August, so she hoped it might be more effective this time.

“Would you like to take this here with our potioneer?” The girl behind the till—Hope, again—asked. She held up the pregnancy potion. “We offer free result readings on Thursdays when our potioneer is on site.”

Her first instinct was to say _fuck no_ and run from the building. But she forced herself to beat back that terrified gut reaction and really think about it. It would be good to talk to a potioneer and explain her situation. Maybe the potioneer could shed more certainty on the strange results before Lily got Caden involved in this. If she wasn’t _really_ pregnant, she didn’t want to have worry him needlessly.

“Okay, yeah. Thanks.”

Hope smiled. “Of course! Good luck!!”

Lily did not smile back.

* * *

 

“And because of those potions, it’s pretty much impossible for me to figure out what was because of them and what was possibly because of a pregnancy,” Lily explained. She had spent the better part of a half hour explaining her predicament to the potioneer. “And I know my first test was positive, but couldn’t it be positive because of my hormones?”

The potioneer gave her a gentle smile. _Oh great—pity. Just what I need_. “I don’t think so. Our potions are much more concrete and advanced than muggle methods. It doesn’t react to hormones, it reacts to heartbeats. That’s why it won’t work before week five at the earliest. Have you ever used the human presence revealing spell? _Homenum Revelio_?”

Lily nodded once.

“It works quite similar to that spell. The magic travels through the membranes in your mouth and through your body, detecting the presence of beating hearts. When you spit the potion back in, it has already gathered its information. It reports the results via the sparks. If there was only one heartbeat—yours—no sparks form. If there were two, it reacts in the typical time frame. And if it sensed more than two heartbeats, it reacts powerfully and quickly. So what I’m saying is…it makes no difference what your hormones are doing. It doesn’t look at that at all. It detects heartbeats. It really is that simple.”

“Oh,” Lily said weakly. “Well. Fuck.”

She had expected another strong burst of emotion, but instead, she felt eerily calm. She supposed she was reaching numbness. She had cried so much, raged so much, sulked in denial so much…she guessed she was arriving slowly at acceptance.

“Would you like me to set up a meeting with a family planning counselor at the hospital? They were a lot of help to me once upon a time.”

“No. No, thanks. Can I take this now, even if I’m about to take that?” Lily pointed at the nausea potion first and then at the pregnancy one. 

“Yes, go on. They are fine together.”

Lily took as big a dose as the potioneer would let her. She looked back up at the older woman afterwards.

“Oh yeah, I also swallowed an entire glass of my last pregnancy potion. Long story.”

The potioneer laughed. “Bet that wasn’t too enjoyable. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you. Do you want to take this potion now?”

“Well, I’m not getting any _more_ doomed. Sure. Why not.”

Lily waited as the potioneer set it up, she took a sip, held it in her mouth until the potioneer told her not to, and then she spat it back. The potioneer counted the seconds that passed before it started sparking—five. Lily smacked the heel of her palm against her forehead and sighed.

“I’d guess twins if pressed. Anything more than twins and it usually starts sparking from the very first drop that goes back into the glass. Definitely more than one, though.”

Lily shook her head. For once, it was almost funny. She laughed darkly.

“And to think all of this began with me trying to give somebody _else_ a baby. This is fucked up.”

“Have you spoken with anybody about this?”

“Do you count?”

“No, I don’t count.”

“Not really, then.”

“Overwhelmed?”

“I couldn’t accurately explain how much unless I started shrieking at the top of my lungs until I blacked out.”

“Fair enough. Well, the counselors are there. I’d urge you to talk with them if you can’t talk to anybody else. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve terminated a pregnancy before. It was the right decision for me. And contrary to what some people say, I never regretted it. But that was because I was certain beforehand that it was what I wanted to do. And on the other side of things, I’ve gone through with an unplanned pregnancy. That turned out to be the right decision, too. Either way, you’re going to be okay.”

“Are you seriously telling me that there are no wrong choices?” Lily grumbled.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. As long as the choice is yours and you’re confident in it, it can’t be wrong.”

* * *

 

It was one thing to think about pregnancy hypothetically. It was another to walk around with the real and inescapable knowledge that there were at least two hearts beating alongside hers. Under the influence of the nausea potion, which actually made her feel decent for the first time in _ages,_ that idea seemed less petrifying and more intriguing. She couldn’t say she felt anything for the tiny things inside of her. She still wasn’t thinking of them as _babies_ , more like inconvenient concepts. But it was an interesting notion that beneath her skin, two little hearts were thumping away. It made her think about dragon eggs; you could hear the dragon baby’s pulse if you pressed your ear to the shell, and she’d always loved that and found it wondrous. It had previously felt almost like being violated to imagine living things buried in her womb without her permission, sucking up her life to form its own, but now it was a curiosity she’d never given much thought to before. She had seen her sister-in-law go through this time and time again, but it’d never seemed particularly novel or exciting to Lily. To have it happening to _her_ …well, that was a different story. She still didn’t know what she would do, but at least she didn’t feel like she was being pinned in a corner at knifepoint, and that was something. With clear exits visible to her, she felt able to actually _think about it_.

But one thing that she _did_ know, without any doubts, was that she would never take her good health for granted ever again. As she walked along, entirely free from nausea for the first time since July, she genuinely felt like a brand new person. Everything seemed brighter and easier. She realized this situation wasn’t really as horrible as she was making it out to be. She would talk to Caden. They would weigh every side of it. And if she decided to get rid of it (them?), she knew that potioneer would be kind and wouldn’t judge her. And in her heart, she knew Caden would support her. She knew they could get through this as long as they trusted each other and were honest with each other. It was a lesson she was constantly learning again and again. She’d probably never have it down to an art. But she was proud of herself because she _hadn’t_ given into her panicked, reckless instincts (for probably the first time in her life).

And there was something to be said about the power of peace of mind. Despite the dozens of new and terrifying uncertainties that this pregnancy had brought up, for the first time in months, she at least knew what the fuck was going on with her body. For once, she felt like she was feeling the way she was “meant to”. Before, it’d been unsettling to feel so horrible only to be told time and time again that she “should” be feeling better by now. It was nice to know _why_ she felt so badly and to have people tell her that it was normal—even expected (as the potioneer had when Lily mentioned her nausea and vomiting and everything else). She also felt cautiously optimistic that there was a light at the end of this. If she terminated the pregnancy, it had at least already changed her hormones, so maybe everything was back to how it was meant to be. And if she didn’t, the morning sickness couldn’t last forever.  

It was nearing dinner, but she wasn’t quite ready to go home. She walked along the railroad tracks beside their house for a minute or so and then took the path they’d made down to the beach. It wasn’t particularly pretty, not like some of the public beaches (it was clogged with rocks and driftwood), but it was theirs. And she liked things that were theirs. She had never expected how much she would. It felt safe to have _their_ home, _their_ things, _their_ beach, _their_ life. She just wanted it to stay that way.

She dug her toes into the sand and hugged her knees to her chest. She rested her chin against them and peered out at the ocean. She would have to tell him tonight. They probably wouldn’t sleep much. And she was a bit frightened, but at least it’d be out in the open. At least they’d be closer to finding some sort of solution. At least she didn’t have to live another week terrified and entombed in her fear. What had once seemed like a burden—Caden sharing this problem with her—seemed like a reprieve now. After all, things were better when they were _theirs._ Why should this be any different?

The sun was beginning to set when she heard the soft tread of footsteps along the path. She glanced back and watched as Caden made his way towards her. He was still in his work clothes; Lily couldn’t help but smile slightly as he carefully toed out of his boots and set them safely atop a rock before walking over towards her in the damp sand. He sat down beside her and stretched his legs out in front of him. Lily glanced over at him as he leaned back on his elbows. He met her eyes. His gaze was soft and patient and the urge to touch him was maddening, but she knew she needed to stay focused. She settled for shifting to the left to face him.

“Are you done avoiding me?” he finally asked, rupturing their silence.

Lily shrugged. She looked down at the sand and dug her finger into it. She was beginning to feel nervous again but struggled to conceal it. “For now. But don’t flatter yourself. It’s the sex I miss.”

“Glad we agree on something,” he quipped. Lily scooped up a handful of sand and tossed it at him. Their laughter mingled together and then gradually faded. She looked out towards the sun—sinking down beneath the sea—and tried to determine where to begin and what to say.

“You look great. Like you feel well, I mean,” he commented.

She nodded. “I found a potion that actually helps. I went by the apothecary.”

“There’s been a potion at the apothecary that would help this entire time?”

“Yeah. It didn’t help the first time I tried it, but it does now.”

She felt his hand touch her shoulder. When she didn’t move away, he slid closer and settled his arms around her shoulders. She leaned into his side. Her heart felt terribly heavy; she took a deep, shaky breath against the pressure, but it didn’t help much. Caden rubbed her thigh absentmindedly.

“I’m glad you found something. Does it help the underlying problem or the symptoms?”

“Just the symptoms. But even that made a world of difference. I can’t explain how much better I feel. Everything seems easier now that I’m not vomiting multiple times a day.”

He let his cheek fall against the top of her head. “We should go buy out their current stock. Just to make sure we’ve got it on hand.”

 _We_. As if her pain was his. As if her illness was his problem, too. As if they were in it together. And in a way, they were. He had put up with so much shit over these past few months and he had done it with so much understanding and patience that Lily had often gotten teary eyed thinking about it. He’d put up with so much over their entire time together, really. He had forgiven her time and time again when others would’ve given up on her. She was mad to have thought that this situation would be any different. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t his, either. It was just something that happened. And the only way this would put a wedge between them would be if she pushed him away again.

She snuggled closer to him and felt that pressure on her heart building and building as he gently stroked her arm. He didn’t seem in any rush to leave the beach despite the waning light, and Lily knew he probably sensed that she was trying to work up the courage to say something. When her emotion got too strong to bear—when she felt tears prick her eyes—she squeezed them shut and nervously gripped her knees.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

He didn’t tease her about being the one to initiate a “talk”. He must’ve sensed how serious this was from the tone of her voice.

“Okay. I’m listening,” he said.

Lily anxiously rubbed her thighs as she struggled with the words. She sucked in a disjointed breath. She opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at the brilliant burnt orange sunset just ahead.

“I’m pregnant.”

She had anticipated a sharp intake of breath at the _very least_. So when she heard nothing from him—not a gasp nor a change in his breathing pattern—she glanced quickly at him. He was already looking at her. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t seem upset, either; his eyes were still soft. He was still waiting. Waiting for what?

“Caden. I’m pregnant,” she repeated sharply. Maybe he was in shock? Why wasn’t he freaking out like she had done? She never expected him to go off the handle in the same way that she had, but she had anticipated _some_ semblance of panic.

Right when she felt liable to throttle him over the tense silence, he nodded. Casually, like she’d just told him she’d gone by the supermarket that day. Lily squirmed a bit, frustrated and deeply unsettled by this reaction. She wanted him to scream or cry or _something_.

“Please say something before I bury you alive on this sodding beach,” she groaned.

He had the nerve to shrug. Throttling was looking imminent. “I thought you might be,” he admitted.

She stared at him in disbelief. “You—hang on. You thought I was pregnant and you just…what? Went on with your day? How long have you thought this? Why didn’t you say something to me?!”

He shifted to face her. “Because I was sure that you already knew. And I knew that if you hadn’t told me, you weren’t ready to talk about it. Which meant, if I confronted you about it, you’d shut me out even _more_ , or we’d end up fighting, and neither of those options seemed very good.”

“So you were just going to sit and wait until I decided to come to you?” she demanded.

“Yeah. I knew you would eventually. I trusted that you’d talk about it when you wanted to.”

Shame slammed into her heart. She looked away from him and punched the sand.

“Well, I feel like the world’s biggest piece of dragon shite, then,” she admitted thickly. She pushed harder at the sand; the rough texture ground against the skin of her knuckles. “While you were being inhumanely considerate, I nearly went off and terminated it without even telling you anything about it.”

“And did you?”

“Clearly not. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you I’m pregnant,” Lily grumbled.

“So you came here to talk about it in the end. So you don’t have to feel like the world’s largest piece of dragon shite. You can be the world’s _second_ largest piece.”

Lily looked at him. “Ha, ha,” she said sarcastically. She continued gouging her knuckles into the sand. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too. Maybe I should have said something. I just wasn’t ready to talk about it, either. I needed time to think about it and figure out how I feel. And I have. And I want you to know that I can see a future with you in every scenario. I won’t lie to you about how I feel: there’s a part of me that wants this. A part of me that _will_ be sad if we decide not to have it. But I won’t blame you. It’s not _you_ that’s making me sad. You’ve always said you never wanted kids, and I knew that, and I chose a life with you over having a family ages ago. This doesn’t really change anything. It makes it a bit harder, for me anyway…because it all seems a bit more…real now. But the worst possible outcome to this would be you deciding to have it without really wanting it. I don’t want to make you unhappy. And if having this baby would make you unhappy, I don’t want you to have it, either. I’ll get over it. I can’t promise I’ll get over it immediately. But I’ll mourn the life we could’ve had and then I’ll get back to loving the life we’re living and I _won’t blame you_. Okay?”

Lily looked away from him. Her vision swam behind tears. She had thought that hearing those words would free her, but instead, she just felt terribly sad. When she spoke, her voice was choked. “I don’t want to break your heart. You don’t have any family. You don’t have anybody. I feel like I’m…robbing you.”

“Oh, come on,” he said softly. Lily was crying when he pulled her against his chest. She gripped his middle tightly and hid her tears into his jacket. “How could you discount the Most Important Person in the World, Lily Potter? That’s not like you. You never forget how important you are.”

Her tears were flowing freely now. She felt like somebody was wringing her dry. With a shuddering breath, she leaned back and looked up at him.  “It’s not that I don’t want a family with you,” she said, her voice shaking unevenly from her tears. “I actually love the idea of that—of us creating children that are half me and half you, us having something that is so solidly _ours_ , a family—but I don’t love the idea of losing myself. I don’t want to be ‘somebody’s mum’. I want to be Lily. I can’t imagine how I could be happy living like Nora does. It would nearly be a death sentence for me, having babies. All the things I love to do…I would have to give them all up. And even after the babies were born, I would never be _me_ again. We couldn’t just…live. All the things we take for granted now, Caden…freedom to just leave and go wherever we like, sleeping through the night, sex wherever and whenever and however we want it, traveling, _my dragons_ —have you ever met a dragonologist with children? Our entire life would be different. And you’d be good at it, but what about me? What if I was rubbish at it? What then? Would you leave me? Take the kids? I wish…” she paused to try and calm herself down a bit; she was becoming extremely upset. She wiped at her face with quivering hands and continued. “I wish that I was different. I wish that the news made me cry because I was happy. I wish this were simpler.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he reassured her. “You can just say ‘I don’t want a baby’. That’s okay in itself.”

“But that’s not the entire truth. I want you to understand,” she said. “I could see a world where it would be lovely. I can imagine the small picture: you holding a baby, us teaching it all about life, us sharing ours with a badass kid—because you know our child would be badass, Caden, and incredibly beautiful and incredibly clever—but I can’t bear the big picture. Me stuck at home. No more dragons. A never-ending cycle of nappies and bottles and baths. Us never getting to do the things we love anymore. I don’t want to be a prisoner. I can’t live like that. I just can’t.”

Caden furrowed his brow. “Merlin, Lil, _nobody_ could live like that. Is that what you think having a family would be like?”

“That’s exactly what it’s like for my brother. He very rarely gets to do things without his kids. He went through all that Animagus training and he’s so fucking talented and he hasn’t even transformed _once_ in like five years because he says it’s “too risky” now that he’s got a family. And my mum. Look at my mum. She quit her career that she _loved_ because she was pregnant with James. And sure, she’s happy, but there’s no way she doesn’t miss Quidditch. And in the larger world I see all these brilliant, clever women and they’re going places and they’re doing amazing things and changing the world and I respect and look up to them _so much_ …and then they have a family and suddenly nothing is important anymore except bedtime stories and nappies. I don’t want to be like that. I love my dragons. I love my life. I love _you_. Fucking hell, Caden, I love _you_. I don’t want to find ourselves stuck in a life together where we’re not even enjoying it. I don’t want to only have a few minutes to ourselves. I know that’s what it means to have kids, and I just can’t…I can’t have kids if that’s the case. I love myself too much. I love my life too much. And I hope you believe me when I say that I love _you_ too much.”

He was quiet for a bit longer than was comfortable, but he held her the entire time, so she didn’t feel too nervous.

“You know what I used to think parenting was?” he finally asked.

Lily thought about his paternal grandparents. “Beating your kid for fun and then scolding them for crying?”

He laughed humorlessly. “No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I _did_ get that impression. No. I used to think that being a parent meant absolutely nothing. See, I had birth parents. But they killed themselves with little to no thought for me. And then I had my grandparents. But they communicated through scolds and punishments. When I saw people out with their parents in public, I remember feeling so confused when they’d show affection or concern for each other, because it honestly never occurred to me that that was part of it. I didn’t really know why I had to have parents in the first place; I did a lot for myself, and the things I couldn’t do, their house elf did. My idea of what a family was would’ve been so fucking far from your idea of one when we were little. But that’s the thing, Lily. Every family is different, for better or for worse. There’s not some…law that says you have to change everything when you have kids. You have to take care of kids and love them and keep them safe, but that doesn’t have to look the same in every household. Everybody lives and loves differently. Even comparing your childhood to Hugo’s…you were both loved and cared for, right?”

“Right.”

“And it didn’t look the same. And that’s okay. What I’m saying is…your idea of a family is never what I saw. I just saw…us. Us with a family.”

He had a way of making rubbish sound so beautiful. Lily gave a watery laugh. “So you saw us fucking on the kitchen table while the kid’s just…what? Eating cereal at the breakfast bar?”

“More like us having kitchen table sex while the kid’s napping.”

“Okay, sure. So we wouldn’t have to totally give up table sex. What about my job? How does _that_ fit into your picture?” She’d worked to make her voice sound skeptical, but deep down, there was an element of plea there. She realized that she _wanted_ him to show her a way that this could work, a way that she could both keep her life and avoid the guilt and sadness that the alternative brought. Maybe he sensed that, because he focused on her question at once.

“Easily. Why the hell would you have to quit your job?”

The question took Lily off guard. “I—because—because when is the last time you heard of a heavily pregnant woman wrestling with dragons?!”

“Never. But I’d also never heard of a nineteen-year-old opening her own sanctuary until you did it. In fact, there are a lot of things I’d never heard of before you. The dragons are going out of their way to be gentle with you already. I wouldn’t be worried about it.”

She supposed he had a point there. “And after the birth?”

“Easy,” he repeated calmly. “We could build a house on the outskirts of the sanctuary. Our current house is too noisy, obviously,” he gestured behind him towards the train tracks. “We’ve got the money. I could work from home and look after the baby while you’re working. You could fly over and drop in whenever you want during your work day.”

“Raised up amongst dragons,” Lily mused aloud. (The sudden, unbidden image of a little sandy-haired boy toddling around with Opal made her heart jump uncomfortably in her chest.) “I don’t think that’s conventional parenting.”

“Nah. But what about us is conventional?”

He had a point there.

“Well, what about going out with our friends?”

He still didn’t seem to see the issue. “They have free childcare here—in home and at centers—for all magical children. There’s nothing wrong with parents having lives outside of their kids.”

His words threw her again because she realized that that is _exactly_ what she’d thought when she’d thought of having kids—that she could _never_ have a life outside of them. She had envisioned a world where she’d have to change who she was. She hadn’t envisioned a world where she simply shared life and love with a child and invited that child into _her world_.

She wasn’t sure what to say, and she had a million thoughts racing through her head, so he continued.

“I know you think you couldn’t do it. And you couldn’t do it somebody else’s way. But, Merlin, Lily…I think you could do it your way and do it wonderfully. When I see you with your dragons sometimes…especially the babies…well, I just think you don’t give yourself much credit when it comes to warmth and affection. You take care of your dragons so well. And you love them so deeply.”

“But babies aren’t dragons,” Lily managed. She thought about that rush of unconditional love she always felt when the dragon babies finally hatched. She thought about those early weeks when she often let the babies sleep under her shirt to keep warm. The connection she felt with them was always so strong, like she was part of something so much bigger, like their futures were hers. He was right about one thing: she loved her dragons. She loved the babies that she helped hatch and she loved the adults that she took in. But there was a very real difference between having babies and having dragons. “Baby dragons need tending to nonstop, but it’s different, because I’ve got help. It doesn’t feel like being trapped.”

He looked down at her in mild disbelief. Lily sensed a bit of insult in his tone. “And what would I be? Part of the decoration? Would I not be help?”

“I count you as part of my shift. The never-ending parent shift. But one shift isn’t enough. We’d need _at least_ two. Trust me.” 

“Yeah, well, I can think of two parents who’d drop everything to come here and help watch a newborn baby.”

Lily laughed suddenly. “Fuck, they would, wouldn’t they? They’re so ridiculous when it comes to grandbabies.” Something else occurred to her. “With newborn babies, you’ve got to nurse them like every three hours. I can’t exactly do my job with a newborn at my tit. And every three hours is mad.” _Plus, if there really are_ two _babies, that every-three-hours thing sounds horrifying and impossible._  

“You know, you wouldn’t have to nurse if you didn’t want to. Some mums don’t, right? There are substitutes here and even in the muggle world too, I think.”

It was something else Lily hadn’t even considered. If she was being honest, the only frame of reference she had at all for infant care was James and Nora, and it just hadn’t really occurred to her that there were other ways to do things than the ways that they did them. And it was true that the life he was painting seemed like _theirs._ It didn’t look like somebody else’s that she’d been shoved into. But there was a very real concern that he had yet to address (because she hadn’t yet told him.)

“I never thought of it this way,” she admitted. “Like you could create your own life with your kid and make it yours, the way you want it.”

He reached up and played absently with the ends of her hair. “I would never even consider the possibility of having a family if it meant we couldn’t be _us_ or have _our life_. There’d be changes, but there are always changes. Honestly, if you could live through that time when you were working for entire days without stop, I think you could live through anything. That was horrible.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. At least, with a baby (babies), she’d have constant help; when she’d been at the sanctuary as the only dragonologist, she’d felt so stressed and confined and there was never any opportunity for any sort of reprieve (at least not until Uncle Charlie saved the day.) “You know, the government does paid leave for both parents for three entire years. You wouldn’t even have to work from home. You could just not work. And I would still work, but I could cut my hours some. That might actually be nice. Work less but get loads more money.”

“If you wanted,” he agreed evenly. Lily knew he was desperately trying to keep their conversation in hypothetical terms. “But like I said before: I’m with you, okay? I understand as much as I can. And it’s not ‘breaking my heart’. I’ve still got you, right? The only thing I ask is that you let me be a part of this. Even if all that’s left of it is an appointment. I want to be there for you for that, too.”

“I knew you would,” she admitted.

He kissed the top of her head. Ordinarily, Lily would tease him for being affectionate, but she really needed it right now.

“When do you want to go? I need to ask off from work. I could probably get tomorrow off.”

“No, I don’t want to go tomorrow,” she said at once. Her stomach had squeezed with anxiety. “I have my healer’s appointment tomorrow.”

“Oh. I didn’t think you’d still want to go. Because you know what’s wrong now,” he admitted, surprised.

“I—well—” she was finding it difficult to admit to all the strange thoughts rushing through her mind. “I’m a bit curious,” she finally settled on.

He leaned back and looked down at her. “About the pregnancy?”

“Yeah. And listen. There’s something else I’ve got to talk to you about.”

This time, apprehension passed over his face. “What?”

“Your idea of a life with a baby. One baby. It’s nice. Probably doable. Never thought of it that way. But there’s not _a baby_. You know how the potions I took before they did the procedure made me produce multiple eggs at once?”

He straightened slowly. Lily knew he had an idea where she was going with this.

“Yeah…”

“Your sperm was an overachiever.”

His breath broke off sharply in surprise the way Lily had thought it would before. He hadn’t been expecting _this one_. She watched almost in satisfaction as his lips parted in shock and his blue eyes went wide. It was nice to see a reaction she’d expected.

“So there are….two babies?” he finally asked.

“That’s what the potioneer thinks. I did the potion. Twice. Did you know it works like the fucking human revealing spell? I had no idea. It senses _heartbeats_. Not hormones. And it sparks like mad in the first few seconds if it senses over two heartbeats in one body.”

He leaned back from her, horrified. “Over two?! _Triplets_?!”

Lily rarely got to see him so shocked and shaken that he was reduced to stupidity. She loved every second of it. She reached for his hand and uncurled his fingers. She brought his hand over and set it over her own heart. His horrified expression evened out.

“Oh, right. You’ve got a heart. I forget sometimes, you see.”

“Nice recovery.”

He leaned forward and set his hands on his lap. Lily caught his eyes drifting down towards her abdomen, a deeply intrigued expression in place.

“So you’ve got _three_ hearts beating in your body right now.”

Lily understood _this_ emotion. She felt oddly excited to see it reflected on his face, too. “Yeah. It’s fucking wicked, right?”

“Fucking cool,” he admitted.

“Yeah! Powerful, I think. And I just want to know for sure how many babies are in there exactly before I do anything. They’ll be able to tell at the healer’s. If I don’t find out first, I’ll probably always be wondering.”

“I would, too. That’s mad. I understand why you said we’d need double the parents now.”

Lily nodded. “Yeah. Nothing’s ever easy for us, is it? We couldn’t just have a surprise pregnancy. We’ve got to have a surprise _twin_ pregnancy.”

Caden shook his head, amused. “If I didn’t know you, I’d be surprised. But this is very you. Doing things big or not at all.”

She couldn’t exactly argue with that; it’d been her style for as long as she could remember.

It was nearly dark now, and in the absence of her nausea and sickening stress, Lily was absolutely ravenous. She hadn’t eaten much at all in the week prior. She was thinking about berry pavlova as they climbed to their feet and headed back up their trail towards the house. Lily was pulled from her thoughts as she felt their hands bump. She wove her fingers with his and held on tight.

“I’m really glad I talked to you,” she admitted. Her throat tightened. She looked down at her feet. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel now.”

He squeezed her hand. She knew he understood her sincerity when he responded without jest. “I’m glad you did, too.”

“How did you know, though?” she asked, a minute or so later. “That I was pregnant?”

“Well, I didn’t _know_ , but I suspected.”

“How? The vomiting? Because everything else was exactly what I’ve been dealing with since July.”

“Well, the vomiting was a warning flag, yeah,” he admitted. He unlocked their garden door. Lily stepped into their home and let out a relieved sigh. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until she was back; she’d avoided it all day long. She felt Caden step up behind her a second later. His arms wrapped around her waist. He rested his chin against her head and patted once at her abdomen. “Mainly I knew that there was no way _this_ was regular weight-gain. You’ve been vomiting up everything for ages.”

Lily turned around in his arms, prepared to hit him, but her hair had already smacked him in the eye as she’d turned. She jumped up, elated.

“Yes!! My hair is hitting-people-in-the-face length again!!”

“Yeah… _great_ …” he agreed. He rubbed over his watering eyes while Lily tugged at her hair, now a few inches past her shoulders. It was getting there. It just needed time to grow. She pet over it lovingly as Caden recovered from the hair-smack to his open eyes. As soon as he had, she shifted back to her previous feigned outrage.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No. If I was calling you fat, I would’ve said that. I was only saying that I noticed you were gaining weight _only here_ and that was very suspicious, especially when you could hardly keep a meal down. Also, it’s not podgy.” He poked at her abdomen again. “Suspiciously firm.”

She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch it. You might get attached.”

He gave her a dry look. “I’m banned from touching you until we figure this out?”

“You can touch parts of me. Just not that part,” she amended. “Loads of other parts to choose from.”

She gave into her hunger and walked over to find something to eat. Caden fed Big Boy with only the smallest of grimaces (he hated holding raw meat) and then washed his hands and joined her in the living room. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a genuine appetite. She sat between Big Boy and Caden on the sofa and ate whatever she wanted until she couldn’t eat anymore. She collapsed back against the sofa afterwards, full and feeling better than she had in a very long time. She closed her eyes and patted the miniature dragon’s scales softly. She listened to the scratching of Caden’s quill against parchment for a few moments, lingering right on the edge of sleep. Her mind had been plagued with anxious, racing thoughts for the past week, to the point that she could hardly sleep at night, but for once, it felt blissfully calm. She was always so surprised when talking about things helped, even though it almost always did. She guessed it was because, when she was most upset, she tended to lean towards self-destructive indulgence.

“You won’t tell anybody, right?” she asked.

“Damn. I was actually writing a letter to the _Prophet_ about it right now. Should I rip it up?”

She ignored his sarcasm. She sat up and looked at him. “I’m serious. I don’t want my family to know. Or our friends. You can’t tell anybody.”

“I can’t even tell—”

“You absolutely can’t tell Zabini. He can’t keep a secret to save his life! Literally! Remember that time his dad threatened to kill him if he told anybody about his affair? The first thing he did after that was invite us all out for drinks to tell us everything in…gross detail.” Lily shuddered.

Caden arched an eyebrow. “I was going to say Hugo.” A pause. “You think I’m closer to Pierce than Hugo?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. You always make excuses for Zabini. You’ve known him longest.”

“He’s my friend, but he’s not my best friend. I wouldn’t tell Zabini. If I was going to tell anybody, I’d tell Hugo.”

Lily snickered. “Aww…is Hugo your best mate, Caden? You were really flattered by him making you best man, weren’t you? Shall I make you both friendship bracelets?”

He didn’t tease back. He looked at her seriously. “I really want to tell Hugo.”

Lily groaned deeply. She knew it made sense– Aster knew, and anyway, it wasn’t really fair to tell him he couldn’t confide in his friends about something so important– but she was terrified of her family finding out. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, and she knew that having all of them ring her to try and boss her into a certain decision (no matter which one) would make her shut down quickly and completely. And she was finally in a place where she felt like she could handle this. She didn’t want to go back to feeling as she had before (lost, trapped, judged, afraid).

“Do you think he could keep it a secret?” Lily asked. “I don’t want my Uncle Ron finding out. If he finds out, it’s over. He would tell my dad immediately. Like, probably wouldn’t even stop gasping in shock before he apparated to the Den.”

“Hugo wouldn’t tell. You know he wouldn’t, Lily.”

“Ugh, I know. I’m just worried,” she muttered. She smoothed her thumb absently over a dent in one of Big Boy’s scales. “I don’t want everybody I know trying to tell me what to do. I’m confused enough without that.”

“Everybody will certainly have an opinion no matter what,” he agreed, and for the first time, Lily heard some resentment in his tone. She hated to admit it, but it did make her feel a bit better to realize that he wasn’t going to let people say horrible things about her, no matter what she did decide. She was used to it, mostly, but she had a feeling that the sensitive nature of this problem might make her more defensive and easily wounded.

“I’m okay with you telling Hugo. Aster already knows.”

“I figured she probably did,” he admitted.

Lily relaxed against him while he finished his paperwork, and once he was done, she tugged him to his feet.

“C'mon,” she said. The memory of his soft eyes had her aching to touch him. “Let’s take advantage of the fact that I’m not vomiting.”

He trailed after her towards the bedroom. He shut the door behind them (closing Big Boy out– he’d get over it) and grinned as she yanked him down onto the bed. Lily took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. She hooked a leg over his hip and brought their bodies flush. Caden pulled back after a moment.

“It’s been nearly a week; that’s our yearly record. I’m not sure I even remember how…”

“Oh, good,” Lily said. She shoved against his chest, pushing him over on his back. He was fighting back another grin as she settled over him. “Then I’d better take the lead and give you a refresher. And you know what? Fuck the barriers. No point now, right?”

“No, I guess not,” he agreed.

She was privately relieved to find that he was every bit as playful and rough as he always was (part of her had feared she’d be treated like a fragile porcelain doll and she had no desire to be placed in a box). She felt on top of the world afterwards. She couldn’t believe how different she felt tonight from how she’d felt the night prior. She was the one who initiated cuddling, and as she drew his arms around her waist and felt his body curl around hers, she heard him say exactly what she’d been thinking.

“I really missed you,” he said.

She knew he wasn’t talking about the sex.

“I missed you, too.”

She wasn’t, either.

He leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She slept better than she had in months.

* * *

 

She’d been nervous about the appointment all morning, but when the healer entered, stubbed her toe on the doorframe, and immediately let out a string of colorful and entertaining swears that Evangeline the parrot would’ve envied, Lily decided that her examination might not be _too_ bad.

It was such a relief to speak with another healer who knew exactly what her body had been through. Scorpius had told this healer _everything_ , and for the first few minutes of the exam, she bounced back everything Scorpius had told her to Lily and Caden, to make sure that she wasn’t missing anything crucial. Lily was reassured by her clear expertise. She explained the current predicament, requested another pregnancy test, and then watched Caden’s face nervously as the _third_ potion began sparking in five seconds. He had kept it quite smooth and free from emotion, but she thought she saw his lips twitch once, as if he’d had the brief urge to smile. She quickly looked back down at her lap and swallowed hard.

“That’s absolutely positive,” the healer said. “Okay, could you lie back and lift your shirt? We can’t use your last cycle to determine how far along you are since you haven’t had one for months, so we’ll have to measure the feti.”

Lily grimaced. She looked over at Caden. _“Feti?_ ” she mouthed. That word was more disgusting than _egg_. He snorted.

She hadn’t thought she was nervous for this part, but after she pulled her shirt up and the waistband of her leggings down, she felt her heart clench. A wave of trepidation washed over her. She looked back over at Caden.

“Get over here,” she hissed. He arched an eyebrow and pointed at himself. _“Me?”_ he mouthed. Lily made a rude hand gesture in response. He was smiling smugly as he walked over and stood beside her. He took her hand in his. Lily focused on the feeling of his thumb brushing across her knuckles and tried to ignore the complicated motions of the healer’s wand as she waved it over Lily’s abdomen. Lily had been squinting at the ceiling, but as soon as the Healer made a sound of discovery, she caught herself glancing towards her at once. She saw the same sort of floating image that she’d seen at Nora’s scan, but instead of one big-headed baby with freakishly tiny limbs, she saw two. Her gut reaction was similar to how it’d been at Nora’s.

“Oh, God,” she blurted, resorting to muggle exclamations. She grimaced. “Why are their heads that big?! It looks unnatural!”

The healer let out a burst of laughter. “Because they’re not done growing! You wouldn’t believe how many mums start sobbing about how ‘gorgeous’ the baby is at this point.”

“Gorgeous…okay…sure…I mean, there’s obviously potential. I can see how the limbs would eventually, you know, stretch and be normal-sized. But this is not an attractive look. Bad angle, maybe. We’ve all been there.” Lily propped herself up on her elbows so she could see a bit better. She studied the image with interest. A smudge on her right glasses lens made it difficult to see as clearly as she’d hoped, but she didn’t feel like pulling them off and cleaning them. One of the babies appeared to be lying on top of the other one. Lily cocked her head to the side and squinted. “How is that one not getting smothered? The poor one on the bottom?”

“They’re cushioned by fluid, and it looks as if they’re in separate placentas, which means not identical.”

“Nice,” Lily appreciated at once. She surprised even herself. She furrowed her brow after her own words.

The healer laughed again. “Some people are disappointed. Most people love the idea of identical twins.”

Lily shook her head. “Not me. Identical twins are eerie. My Luna has twin sons and as soon as they realized that talking in unison frightened me they would—hey! Oi!! Fuck!!” Lily reached over blindly and smacked at Caden’s arm. The babies on the image had just moved, nearly at the same time. Lily couldn’t really process that they were inside of her, since she hadn’t felt anything, but it was cool despite. Why had she never appreciated how truly bizarre all of this was all the times her sister-in-law went through it? Lily watched the babies move about for a few more seconds, and then she glanced at Caden, because he wasn’t saying anything and she was hitting him and this was fucking _cool_ and she wanted to share that with him and—he wasn’t looking. Lily stared at him in surprise. He was staring at the wall opposite of them. His hand was still around Lily’s, but Lily got the feeling he was a million miles away in his head. She squeezed his hand until he looked carefully at her, clearly keeping his eyes from focusing on the image.

“You’re not looking,” Lily said. She heard her own disappointment.

“Nah,” he said. He looked down at the examining table and didn’t offer anything else.

Lily glanced back at the image. “But they look like muggle aliens and they’re trying to kick each other in the face or something.”

He nodded. “It sounds really cool, Lily.”

Despite the effort he was making, Lily could tell he was a bit upset. She felt every ounce of her excited intrigue melt away. The healer cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Well, going by their development so far, I’m putting you around thirteen weeks. You’re just heading into your second trimester—”

“What?!” yelped Lily. She sat completely up; the image folded into itself and then faded midair. “Second?! Aren’t there only three?! What the fuck happened to the first?!”

“Right. It’s okay, though. You have a bit of time. If you want to keep them, it’s not too late to start you on the required supplements. If you’re not, you’ve got until the twenty-fourth week to take the potion, but unfortunately, because you’re past ten weeks, you’ll have to have it done here because we’ll need to follow up with another procedure to ensure complete removal. The recovery isn’t too bad. The good news is I think this will completely sort out your previous problem, no matter which decision you make. After this pregnancy, your body will be able to balance itself back out naturally. And more good news: the morning sickness should be on its way out within the next couple of weeks.”

Lily’s heart was inching down by the second.

“Okay,” she said.

“Do you know yet?” the healer asked gently. “What you want to do?”

“I—no. I don’t know,” Lily hedged. She felt her throat burn. She glanced towards Caden, wishing he’d provide some input, but he was still staring at the floor. She turned back around, annoyed.

“In that case, I’ll send you with the supplements just in case, okay? Consider taking them if you aren’t sure. It’s important. Let me get you potions for the dizziness…I’ll be right back.”

Lily wondered if the awkwardness had been getting to the healer as she rushed from the room. Lily sat up and pulled her shirt down. Her hands were shaking as she smoothed the creases from it.

“Lily…”

She didn’t look back at him. Her eyes were burning. “You shouldn’t’ve come if you couldn’t handle it.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach. She glared at the floor, her anger entirely superficial for the sake of masking the deep hurt that she felt.

“I thought that I could,” he finally admitted.

She leaned forward so her hair fell in front of her face like a curtain. “You said you wanted to be a part of this.” _I really wanted to share that with you._

“Lily, I do. That’s the problem.” He sounded close to tears, too. “This made it very real.”

“Yeah, how do you think I feel? It’s my body she was looking into.”

She felt the examining table move as he sat down beside her. They avoided each other’s eyes.

“I know they’re not really babies, not yet. But I was afraid to look at them. I was afraid of how much they might _look_ like babies. I was afraid to have a solid image in my mind of them because then, if you decide not to have them, when I think about the procedure…” he trailed off. He didn’t have to finish. Lily understood.

“I guess I didn’t think about that. I was just…excited, I guess. I guess I was excited. It’s so…I don’t know, I’ve never experienced anything like it before, you know?” She was having a difficult time explaining herself. “I just really wanted you to see it, that’s all,” she muttered. She glanced over at him. He was staring at his hands miserably. “If it makes you feel any better, they really did look like muggle aliens.”

Her heart warmed when his lips quirked up in a small smile. “I guess that sort of does.”

Lily leaned her head against his shoulder. “The uglier alien takes after you and the cuter one takes after me.”

He didn’t even glance at her as he shoved her over onto her side. She laughed and aimed a kick at his shin. He was fighting back laughter as he turned over and pinned her to the examining table, his fingers slipping beneath her shirt to tickle over her ribs while he pressed a kiss to her neck. When their laughter quieted, silence took its place. Lily’s guilt returned.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget that people handle things differently than me,” she murmured. “I was just so curious—and curious about being curious, really, when I always thought I’d find this disturbing at best—that I really wasn’t thinking about how hard this must be for you.” She met his eyes and reached up, sweeping his hair back from his face. She read his silent and suppressed longing easily. “I just need time to think about it. I didn’t hate it—seeing them. It was actually…I dunno. Nice, in a way. I mean, I’m not head-over-heels in love, and it still feels sort of…surreal, but it was exciting in the way all new things are. There’s just so much to think about. I honestly don’t even know where to start.”

Those old feelings of being tearfully overwhelmed were beginning to return, and as Lily left the hospital, supplements and potions in hand, she couldn’t help but feel like this appointment had only served to make her more confused. She still wasn’t sure if she wanted to be the size of a house or deal with two newborns, but she also wasn’t sure if she wanted to get rid of them, either. The problem was that she had so many mixed feelings. She liked the idea of the babies as kids, but she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of newborns. She liked the idea that her body could be powerful enough to create two new human lives, but she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of being so massive that she was unable to lean over and tie her own shoes. She liked the idea of her old life, but she wasn’t sure she could ever really go back to it now. Even if she got rid of them, she felt that everything would be different. And most of all, she was terrified to regret whatever decision that she made.  

* * *

 

By the next morning, it was all feeling just a bit more _real_. Seeing the babies had helped convince her that she was indeed pregnant; all her past denial had been chipped away. Now all that was left was difficult decision-making.

She extracted herself from Caden’s arms, crept from the bed, and headed into the bathroom to take her many potions. She took her nausea one first, then the one for dizziness, then the supplement one. She had so many bottles shoved into her small shelf that she had no room for her new ones, so after a moment of consideration, she reached forward and lifted up her large bottle of contraceptives and moved it to the small cabinet. She set the new potions in its place. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and then she reached for her eyesight potion by habit, but after holding it in her hand for a moment, she realized it wasn’t certified for use in pregnancy (she’d never done that sort of testing when she made it, not having the time or resources due to her young age). She’d already been taking it, so maybe damage had already been done, but then again, the babies had seemed all right on the scan. She rolled the bottle between her palms and bit her lip. Not taking it felt like she was deciding to keep them, but what would it really hurt to wear her glasses until she was sure? She was taking the supplement potions, wasn’t she? After mulling over the choice for three whole minutes, the mirror lost its patience.

“Would you make up your mind? It’s not the potion you need to be laying off of, anyway. It’s the fried foods. I feel as if we’ve had this conversation,” Beatrice grumbled.

“Fuck off. Mind your business.”

“You don’t have to be so _rude_ …maybe if you ate less fried foods and got rid of that excess weight you’d be more cheerful…”

Hesitantly, Lily set the potion back on the tiny shelf. She slowly lifted her glasses up from the counter. She paused before putting her glasses on and nearly changed her mind, but she decided, for the time being, that cautiousness wouldn’t be a bad thing. At least until she knew what she wanted to do. She pushed her glasses onto her face and left the bathroom. She made breakfast for the first time in a long while, actually enjoyed her morning tea, and then rang Mia on the muggle pocket phone she’d long ago supplied, to make sure everything was going well in her absence. She was all smiles after hearing that Cobalt had officially gone a full day without spiking a temperature, meaning with near certainty that he’d get to keep his leg after all.

She and Caden had breakfast, showered, and dressed for the day. Caden poked her glasses before they walked from the house.

“Classic ‘Lily Look’ today, I see. Did you run out of eyesight potion?”

She nearly told him exactly why she hadn’t taken her potion, but she stopped short, because she didn’t want to get his hopes up. She still had so many things to consider before she could make a solid decision.

“No,” she said shortly. She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “And nothing beats a classic, Caden.”

* * *

 

On the following Friday, she did something that she considered highly dangerous: she rang her mum and accidentally dropped the “M” word.

“Hi, Mummy.”

 _Fuck_.

“Lulu, is everything okay?” her mum said at once. The concern in her voice made Lily’s eyes burn with tears. She suddenly wanted nothing more than her mum’s arms around her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Lily lied. She poked over her protruding stomach moodily; it had grown since last week, leaving Lily _officially_ trouser-less. She had to leave all her shorts and trousers unbuttoned. “I just wanted to chat. How’s Nora?”

“She’s fine. Lily, _you_ don’t sound fine,” her mum persisted.

“I’m just stressed. Work’s very…trying right now.” She knew she needed to gracefully steer the conversation towards her question to avoid arousing her mum’s suspicions, but she wasn’t sure how to do that quickly enough. _Oh well, now or never._ “Mum. Do you miss Quidditch?”

“Playing professionally? Did something happen at work? Are you thinking of quitting? Because I can get you a _great_ job in the Department of Magical Creatures and—”

“It’s a little insulting how excited you sound right now,” Lily grumbled.

“Sorry. I just like when my kids _aren’t_ being nearly burnt to death on a daily basis.”

“Do you? Miss Quidditch?” Lily pressed. “If you could go back in time…like…right before you got pregnant with James…would you make the same decision?

Her mum was confused. “Would I still shag your dad so James could be created or would I still quit Quidditch?”

“Both.”

“Oh. I’d definitely still shag your dad and I’d definitely still quit Quidditch,” she said.

Lily was suspicious. “I feel like you’d say that even if it wasn’t true, Mum. But I want you to tell me the truth. I’m really…well…” she scrambled for a believable lie, so her mum would feel like Lily was admitting something huge without Lily actually having to. “I’ve been thinking about maybe having kids one day.” Half-true. “And it’s taking me some time to figure it out. And I want to know the honest truth. Please, Mum. It won’t hurt my feelings if you say you wished you’d never had kids. I just want to know the honest to Merlin _truth_.”

A five-second silence followed. Finally, her mum responded.

“I would still have your brother, without a doubt in my mind or my heart. But sometimes…yeah. I miss Quidditch. Sometimes I wish I’d gone back after he was born.”

 _Now we’re getting somewhere._ Lily propped her ankles up on her desk and watched Opal prowling around outside of her office window. “Why didn’t you?”

“At first, I planned on it. But then I got horribly injured during a match early on in my pregnancy. And I started to think about the baby…about what would happen if I died. I didn’t want to leave my child without a mum. And James was so bloody adorable…I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him for matches. He had those damn eyes…” her mum trailed off, her voice dripping with affection. “Merlin, he had everybody who ever saw him so charmed.”

“Yeah, okay, we get it: James was your favorite,” Lily said impatiently. “Why didn’t you just have Dad and James travel with you?”

“Oh, in my dreams, Lulu. It would’ve been lovely. Can you imagine? Your dad and I and our babies traveling around and only worrying about each other and Quidditch. But it just wasn’t possible. Your dad was still dealing with so much clean-up from the war in the Ministry. He was needed, and he had to stay, and he’s mine, so I stayed, too.”

Lily felt an odd feeling in her stomach. Hope, maybe. “So if Dad had offered to quit his job, you two would’ve just brought us around with you? You would’ve kept doing what you loved and we just would’ve been a part of it? You wouldn’t have given up your dreams or who you were.”

“Er, first of all, I _never_ gave up who I was. I ought to Scourgify your mouth for that, Lily Luna.” Her voice softened after her scold. “I know it’s really difficult for you to understand, because you don’t have kids, but it didn’t ever feel like that to me. Like I was trading myself in for you lot. I just felt like you were a part of me. I still feel like that. Imagine…if you could rip out parts of your soul or whatever and let them live outside of your body. That’s what it felt like.”

“Gross, Mum,” Lily muttered, mostly because she knew her mum would be suspicious if she didn’t. She found herself thinking about the image of her alien-babies. In a way, she guessed she could understand. She didn’t have to stretch her imagination too far to imagine the fierce protectiveness she’d be capable of feeling for those two weird-looking things if only she let herself. “So you never regretted having kids? Ever?”

“Er, I didn’t say _that_. There were times when you lot were young, when your dad was working long hours and I was so overwhelmed and everything I did seemed wrong and I’d had a series of bad days and you lot were sick and…I can remember a few times feeling so overwhelmed that I broke down in tears in the bathroom, thinking that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this after all. But I never stopped loving you lot. I never wished that I didn’t have you. I just doubted my abilities, like anybody does with anything they care about.” She paused. “You know, mums aren’t perfect.”

“Yeah, I _know_ ,” Lily teased. Her mum didn’t laugh.

“I’m serious. We’re human and we feel every sort of emotion there is, and that includes the more shameful ones like guilt, frustration, regret, and self-doubt. So if you’re asking me if motherhood is lovely and rewarding all the time, the answer is no. Sometimes, it feels like the most thankless thing in the world. But the important thing is that those instances pale so pitifully in comparison to the good days. And again, it’s one of those things I just can’t explain well to you, love. There are no words in any language that can explain what it feels like to look into your baby’s eyes and see it smile at you for the first time…” her mum trailed off thickly. She must’ve pulled the phone down a second later because her yell was muffled. “HARRY! DO YOU THINK I’M TOO OLD TO HAVE ANOTHER BABY?!”

“WHAT?!”

“Mum, don’t have another baby, c’mon. Don’t do that to your body. You told it you were done,” Lily sighed. “It won’t trust you anymore.”

“No, you’re right. Hang on. NEVERMIND, HARRY, THE BABY’S CANCELLED. SORRY. LULU’S GOT ME TALKING ABOUT NEWBORNS. Okay. I’m back. Did that help? Did that answer your questions?”

“Maybe. So…to be clear…you’re saying that—if it had been possible—you would have kept your job and raised your kids?”

“If they could’ve traveled around with me, yeah.”

“Okay. That’s all I was wondering. Well. One more thing.”

She pulled nervously at the hem of her too-snug shirt. Her mum grew impatient after a full minute elapsed.

“Yes?!”

“…What happens if you’re bad at it?”

It took her mum a second. “Bad at being a mum?”

Lily pulled harder at her shirt. “Yeah.”

“Oh, Lulu,” her mum said, her tone turning gentle. “Love, you wouldn’t be bad at it. You know how to love so fiercely. And that’s what matters.”

“I’m not Nora.”

“Bloody hell, _I’m_ not Nora! Who _is_?! Well, you know, other than Nora, of course. I made so many mistakes while raising you lot. Your dad made mistakes, too. But we love you so much. You tell me. Looking back, do you think you had a good childhood? Did you feel loved and supported?”

She didn’t have to think about it. “Yes. Of course.”

“Well, all I did was love you lot. Literally…I had no other game plan. It actually drove Aunt Hermione _mad_. Your dad and I have a classic parenting technique, and you know that it is?”

“Naughty step?” Lily guessed.

“No. Winging it. If we didn’t know what to do, we went with our gut. Sometimes that was a mistake. That’s okay. We learned from it.”

“But what if I never learn to change a nappy well or—or…” Lily trailed off, her mind overcome with all the areas she felt less-than-confident in. “What if I can’t clean up my kid’s sick without also vomiting?”

“I would teach you how to change a nappy perfectly. And Lily, you regularly perform surgical procedures on dragons. I think you could stomach a bit of kid vomit.”

Her mum had a point. “I just don’t want to make the wrong decision.”

“Are you getting a bit freaked out with Lyra’s birth approaching?” her mum guessed.

“…Yeah. It’s just got me thinking about it. You know. Having babies.”

“Right. Try not to worry so much. You’ve got time. And one day you’ll wake up and the choice will be clear.”

There was something else nagging her, but she was afraid to push her lie too far. She quickly crafted it in a way that would hopefully seem less suspicious.

“Mum, Dad’s an orphan. And Caden’s an orphan.”

“Right…”

Lily lowered her voice to a whisper, not wanting anybody that might wander into her hut to hear her. “Did Dad always want kids?”

“Deep down, yeah, I think so. But for a while he was unsure. His job was still so dangerous, he was working so many hours, and there was still a part of him stuck in the trauma of the war, a part that feared the world was too unsafe to bring a child into it. Why do you ask?”

Lily took a deep breath. “Did you ever feel like…I mean…is it wrong to feel as if…” she couldn’t get the words out. Turns out it didn’t matter; her mum knew her well.

“That a very important part of your desire to have kids is to give him a family?” her mum guessed.

Lily nodded and then remembered that her mum couldn’t see her. “Yeah. Is that terrible? I’ve been looking at all these pamphlets, and all of them say the only right reason to want a child is to share your love, and you should never do it for anybody else, but…when I think about it…I’ve got a lot more reasons than just sharing my love. And a huge one is him.”

Ginny snorted. “You wouldn’t see one of those pamphlets running here. The Ministry is currently trying to find a diplomatic way to run a campaign that is essentially ‘ _have babies for our society!’_ ”

“But is it wrong to feel like that?” Lily pressed. “Did you feel like that?”

“Without a _doubt_ , Lulu. I wanted all my babies, don’t get me wrong, but I was so in love with the idea of giving your dad the one thing he’d never really had but deserved _so much_ …a family of his own. I’m sure it sounds disgusting to you, but I used to lie awake at night when I was pregnant with James, and I remember how _amazing_ I found it all—the fact that I was growing a child inside of me that would become our family, the fact that we had created a child together, the fact that he’d never again be alone in the world or unloved. I think it’s really sweet that you feel that way. But remember that _you_ have to want it _too._ It’s okay for things like that to be another positive to the situation, but you can’t have babies if you don’t want them. You’ll only be miserable.”

“I know,” Lily reassured her mum. “And let’s be honest, when have I ever done something I didn’t want to do?”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, it’s just been on my mind lately,” Lily dismissed. “But how are things there?”

“Albus and Scorpius are nesting like pros. They’ve turned one of their guest rooms into the most stunning nursery…I’ll have to send you a muggle photo next time I’m over there…if I can figure out how…”

While her mum filled Lily in on all the excitement happening in England, Lily found her mind wandering. She had essentially heard what she’d wanted (that working physically-demanding jobs after having a baby was possible and that it’s something her own mum considered acceptable and even preferable.) Her only question now was whether a mum who _had_ chosen to work regretted it. She didn’t want to have the babies and then end up stuck at home miserable, but she _also_ didn’t want to have the babies and then end up miserable at her job wracked with mummy-guilt. And when she considered working mothers, there was only one person to call.

“Hello, Lily and Tiny Friends!” Hugo greeted.

“Say that again and I’ll throttle you,” Lily warned lowly. “You’re lucky that you even know. Don’t push it. I can still modify your memory.”

“Can’t. You’re on the other side of the world. And I don’t think the muggles even let preg—”

“OI!!”

“—your type of people on airplanes,” he finished, a bit smugly.

Lily bit back the urge to fight with him; there were more important things right now.

“Are you at your parents’ house?” she asked.

“Yes, actually. How’d you know?”

“Didn’t. Just hoped.”

“Oh, hey, Aster, Lily’s on the phone!!” Lily heard him call. A moment later, her best friend’s voice replaced her cousin’s. “Lily!! What’s happened? Are you still…you know?”

Lily eyed her growing stomach. “Without a doubt. Don’t say anything more about it in front of my aunt and uncle, though. I actually want to talk to Aunt Hermione. Can you give her the phone?”

“Hermione?” Aster asked, mildly surprised. “Oh, okay. Hang on. She’s with my mum in the sitting room. They’re looking at floral arrangements…”

Lily waited around a minute, and then she heard somebody pick up the pocket phone again.

“Hello, Lily!” Aunt Hermione greeted. “How are you?”

“Okay,” Lily said. She drummed her fingers against the desk. “I have a question.”

“Okay, go for it. I’m sure I’ve got an answer.”

“Did you ever regret working while your kids were small? I’m only asking because this stuff with Baby Lyra has got me thinking about parenthood and the like. And, as you know, my career is very important to me.”

“Oh. Okay. Wasn’t expecting that, but…okay. Let me see if I can help.” There was a moment of pause broken only by some rustling sounds—Lily guessed her aunt was leaving the room she’d been in to seek privacy. “Well, it’s a bit complicated, because I certainly do wish I’d been around more for their childhoods—childhood is so fleeting—and there were times that I felt as if I spent more time at work than at home, but…” she trailed off. “I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think working actually made me a better mum. I needed the mental stimulation, the purpose, the excitement. At times, when I was missing Rose and Hugo, I wished I’d stayed home with them like Ron mostly did. But the few times that I _was_ stuck at home, I inevitably ended up feeling so…” her aunt trailed off. “I don’t want to say ‘unfulfilled’ because that isn’t quite true. But I didn’t feel like I was _me_. I felt like something was missing. I found that I was a better mum when I felt better, and I felt better when I had a challenging job and something that felt bigger than whatever was going on in my home.”

“So…working made you _better_ at being a mum?”

“You don’t hear it much, I know. Women are afraid to say it. There are people out there who look down upon it, who think mums should be in the house with their kids all day every day. And yet they think it’s fine for the dads to have fulfilling careers…sorry, I won’t get started on that, but I just want you to know that, personally, for _me_ , I don’t regret it. It was what worked for me and my family. I had no idea you were even considering kids, Lily.”

“Me neither,” Lily muttered.

“While I’ve got you, did you try on your dress for the wedding? We’ll need to have alterations made soon if they’re needed. Padma and I don’t want to put anything off until the last minute.”

Lily glanced down at her expanding middle. She swallowed hard. If she decided to keep the babies, the day of Aster’s wedding—the 20th of May—would be the day before she’d enter the third trimester. She’d be twenty-eight weeks in and probably the size of a whale. The tiny, sparkly Maid of Honor dress hanging on her wardrobe probably wouldn’t even fit over her tits. But if she didn’t keep the babies, it wouldn’t matter. But if she _did…_

“I...I think I might need alterations,” Lily heard herself say. Her heart lurched and began racing. She felt adrenaline course through her. Stupidly, that tiny decision felt like a much bigger one. “I’ll try it on again and…and I’ll mail it to Aster with measurements.”

“Okay. Can you send it by owl as soon as possible?”

“Yeah. Yes. I can do that.”

Lily ended the call a few minutes later. She set the phone on her desk and stared unseeingly at the wall, her mind spinning with a million different thoughts. After a moment of hesitation, she pulled her shirt up bit by bit, exposing the unfamiliar landscape of her stomach. Her fingers trembled as she set a palm over the highest point. She swallowed hard, and for the very first time, she let herself think about those alien-babies as things that were actually inside of her. She smoothed her hand over her skin and pictured where they might be right now. Maybe the smaller alien-baby was still near the top, kicking the larger one in the face. Maybe they were side-by-side now, their little fists curled up, their fingers close to touching. She watched her stomach rise and fall with her breaths. She imagined it swelling more; she brought her hand out further and further, trying to imagine and measure what it’d look like a few months from now. She hadn’t felt them move—it wasn’t time yet—but she would, if she kept them, and the thought of that made her heart thump strangely. They would move because they were real. Beneath her hand, beneath her skin, they were there, two potentials for life. Beneath her palm, beneath her skin, there was the potential for a family. Hers and Caden’s. She could see him holding a sleeping infant or swinging a toddler by the hands; that wasn’t difficult to imagine at all. She could see two kids romping around in the fields surrounding her sanctuary. And for a second, as she delved into this strange new world that had been crafted inside her own body, she could see herself holding two babies with such detail that, for a second, she was positive she could feel the weight of them against her chest. Her heart fluttered strangely again. It was the first time she had ever pictured herself as a mum. And as she rubbed over her belly, she didn’t feel any grand, sweeping waves of unconditional love. She didn’t feel suddenly or magically maternal. She didn’t know the babies yet; she could hardly process the fact that they were there. But she _could_ feel the stirrings of extreme protectiveness. And if her gut and her heart (where protectiveness lived and bred) thought that there was something there to protect, well…she had always trusted those above her head.

* * *

 

She considered going home and having a calm, sensible conversation about her decision. But instead, she had Ivan drive her to a shop brimming with soppy, sentimental gifts and trinkets. She wandered around for over an hour, playing with the various muggle gadgets, putting random things into her basket for her nieces’ and nephews’ next birthdays. She found a cuddly toy dragonfly patterned with silver stars and _had_ to buy that for Baby Lyra. After deliberating over a variety of different gifts that were sure to earn her the mocking of a lifetime from her boyfriend, she settled on a ridiculously ugly T-shirt with a fucking kangaroo pouch stitched on the front. As Lily squinted at the attached label, she realized that dads were supposed to actually put their human babies inside of it. It was precisely the sort of shit they’d snicker about in public. It was perfect.

She paid for her items and walked the moderate distance to her house. She used that time to attempt to put her thoughts into words, so she could be ready for their conversation. _The things that I was scared of…I’m not scared of them anymore. I know now that being a mum doesn’t mean I have to stop being Lily. I trust you entirely and completely; I always have, ever since I first asked you to help me practice the Imperius curse, and I love you and I wouldn’t_ ever _have babies with anybody else, but with you, it seems possible. With you, it seems like it’s worth it. I want to give you this. I want us to share this. I know it’s silly, but I feel like they’re ours, and I want to keep them with us. I think I would love them deeply. And I know that it won’t be easy. I know that we’ll have to sacrifice things. I’m sure the latter part of this pregnancy will be absolute hell and I’m sure I won’t enjoy it—who could enjoy being that hugely pregnant? But it won’t be forever. I’ll enjoy our life with our kids. I can already imagine all the things that we could do with them, all the things we could share with our family. We don’t have to be perfect. We can be a badass family who loves hard and makes mistakes. And I know our kids will be so fucking adorable and clever, and if they’re anything like you, forgiving and kind. I know I’m not making sense. But this is what my gut and my heart are both telling me to do. And if I don’t listen to them, I think I’ll regret it._

“You’re home early,” Caden greeted, drawing Lily from her deep thoughts. She hadn’t even processed that she’d made it to the door. She set her shopping bags down on the kitchen table and leaned in to kiss him. He set his hands on her hips and studied her eyes after she pulled back.

"Are you feeling all right? Are you still exhausted?”

She’d spent all morning in a fog, so tired that she poured her coffee into her cereal and the milk into the coffee machine. She’d restricted herself to her office at work that day just to make sure her fatigue didn’t end up inadvertently hurting the dragons. She couldn’t afford to be careless with them. But her conversations with her mum and her aunt and her subsequent decision had invigorated her. She had been going through her life with two different futures laid out in front of her, and it had been both confusing and taxing. It felt so mentally peaceful to be free from it, to have a clear future in mind, one that she felt excited for. It felt nearly as freeing as being free from nausea for the first time in months had felt.

“I’m all right,” she assured him. She stepped out of his grip and crossed over to the counter. He’d been chopping fruit for a salad; she nabbed a few berries, and with her back still to him to hide her smirk, she said: “I picked something up for you on my way home.”

“More ink?” He guessed.

She’d forgotten that they were out. “Er…no. Though that would’ve been a sensible gift.”

She heard him rummaging through a bag. “You got me a cuddly dragonfly?”

Lily turned around to look at him. He was poking around in the bag full of toys for their nieces and nephews. “Not that bag, the one closest to me. That’s for Baby Lyra.”

“Oh, it’s nice,” he smiled. He tapped the fur. “Stars. I get it: Lyra. Thoughtful.”  He set the toy back in its rightful bag and reached for the one closest to Lily. Lily turned back around and squeezed her eyes shut. She listened to him pull something from the bag; the paper rustled. There was a pause as he examined it. Laughter followed.

“Oh, wow,” he snorted. “Is this pocket like…a built-in briefcase? Is this your way of telling me I’m working too much?”

Lily huffed impatiently. “No, look at the tag! You’re ruining my moment!”

“Okay, all right, keep your knickers on…it’s a…oh.”

He went very quiet. Lily counted to ten, and when he still hadn’t said anything, she turned around to face him. He had the shirt held up against his chest as if he’d been checking the size and his eyes were still locked on the tag, the one that showed a photo of a dad in that shirt with his newborn baby in the pocket. Lily took a deep breath and walked over to him.

“They don’t make them for twins for some reason,” she said. She realized that she was genuinely nervous. What if he’d changed his mind over the past week or so (like she had)? What if he’d been quiet on the topic not because he was giving her space to think but because he wanted to get rid of them, too? That realization made her stomach queasy for the first time in weeks. And like it often was with her, she became even more aware of what she wanted to do when faced with the realization that maybe she wouldn’t be _able_ to do what she wanted to do (because she couldn’t do this without him). She had to take another deep breath before she could manage to continue. She hated the obvious apprehension sprinkled through her words. “I-I asked the person behind the till. They said two babies would be too heavy and would rip the fabric. Which is sort of rubbish, because I’m carrying two babies, and as far as I know my skin won’t rip open, so why couldn’t they just find a really strong fabric comparable to that? Faux leather or something? Er. Anyway, the babies will just have to take turns.” There was another ten-second pause. “For fuck’s sake, say something, please.”

He finally looked up at her. His eyes were full of such softness that Lily felt her heart turn over. There was no mistaking that look. After a moment of intense eye contact, Lily offered him a smile. His responding grin lit up his entire face. She had never in her life seen him that bright.

“Seriously? I mean– without a doubt, one hundred percent seriously?” he asked, as she’d known he would.

Lily reached out and set her hands atop his shoulders. “Do you remember when we talked about marriage and babies a while back? Before the potions, when we came to London for Delilah’s first birthday? We decided ‘me or nobody’?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. His voice was suspiciously thick.

“It was always you or nobody when it came to things like this, and I choose you. I choose this.” She had pondered over all her reasons on the walk over, but now, standing in front of him, there was only one that really mattered. “I want this with you, Caden. I want to share this with you.”

His eyes burned into hers. She didn’t know if it was the emotion in his gaze that brought tears to her eyes or the emotions swelling within her own heart. Everything was intertwined these days.

“And this is what _you_ want? You’re not doing this for me. You’re doing this because you want to?”

“I am doing this for you. _And_ I’m doing it because I want to. They can both exist.”  
  
He slowly lowered the shirt. Tears finally swelled in his eyes. “Lily, I don’t know what to say.”

“Well that’s a bloody miracle,” she said lightly. “I’ll enjoy the silence.”

He weakly backhanded her arm. She slapped his right back. After sharing a watery smile, Lily threw herself into his arms and squeezed him so tightly that it hurt her arms. Her love for him swallowed her whole. For a few moments, all she wanted to do was hold him and be held by him in turn.

“I love you so fucking much. I always have.”

He had a way of saying those words with so much conviction that it always felt like the first time ever hearing them. Lily was glad she could hide her tear-filled eyes into his shirt.

“I love you, too. Clearly.”

“Clearly,” he agreed, his voice wavering slightly. She was certain that this– having their babies, creating their family– was the most powerful expression of love that she’d ever manage. She would never top it, so she hoped he enjoyed every moment of it, and she hoped he really understood the depth of it.

He loosened her tight grip on him so he could create enough space to kiss her. Afterwards, he hovered his hands in front of her stomach. He arched an eyebrow. Lily sighed.

“Oh, go on. You’re going to be disappointed, though. It’s very anticlimactic.”

With her permission, he immediately tugged her shirt up and rested his palm on her swollen stomach. Lily watched his face as he waited for something. After a few moments, he let his hand fall back down to his side.

“It just feels like skin,” he finally admitted, a bit sheepishly.

“Yeah, like I said. Anticlimactic. The calm before the storm. Soon I’ll be the size of a whale and you’ll be able to feel all sorts of things as the alien-babies kick around my internal organs. You sure you’re up for that?”

“Are _you_ up for that? It’s your internal organs being kicked around.”

“I can take the babies. I’m not scared of them or their alien limbs. I’m Lily Potter, dragonologist and local rebel: my body has been through _much worse_.”

Caden laughed (as she’d hoped he would.) He took her hands in his. “If you’re up for it, I’m definitely up for it.”

She couldn’t help it. She had to kiss him again. He poured so much passion into it that she got a bit carried away for a few minutes. She snogged him on the table until the position go too painful and her glasses ended up falling off her face, and then she pulled back and sat up. She was summoning her glasses back to her when he spoke next.

“You know, I think I like this,” he said, and when she glanced at him, he was holding the horribly ridiculous baby shirt.

“Oh no, no way. I won’t be seen in public with you if you’re wearing that! You’re a man, not a marsupial!”

“No, I do. It’s a great idea. The baby can snooze right here safely and I’ve still got two arms to hold the other baby or stop your dad from strangling me.”

“First of all, my dad won’t strangle you. I actually think he’ll like you more for getting me pregnant. He loves babies. Secondly, we’re burning the kangaroo shirt.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Look, our babies will already be born out of wedlock like bastards, so if I have to kill you, it won’t change their identities much. Give me the shirt.”

He stared her dead in the eyes and tugged it over his button down. Lily had been certain that he was teasing her, but he wore it with so much conviction that she was beginning to wonder. For a man who took so much pride in his appearance, he seemed pretty damn happy in that awful kangaroo shirt. And she really didn’t have much choice; she had to protect their public image, now more than ever. She couldn’t very well let her children—who were sure to be wild and fierce and every bit as cool as them—be born to a dad who wore a kangaroo pouch in public. Really, she was just protecting her family. She tackled him over onto the table and tried her hardest to work that damn shirt over his head, but they eventually ended up laughing so hard that nobody could grip the other with any real strength. Lily ended up lying flat on her back on the table, her pulse racing from the exertion and her cheeks flushed. She glanced over at Caden. He still had an amused smile in place.

“It’s _really hideous_ ,” he finally agreed.

Lily flung her hand out. “ _Thank you_! I know it is. It was a _joke_. The ugliness of it was part of the joke!”

“It’s hideous and you need one, too.”

“Fuck off, Rowle.”

“Nah.”

* * *

 

“All right, listen,” Lily began. Every dragon keeper, dragonologist, and handler in her employment were standing outside of the hut for the meeting she’d ordered. “I’m pregnant.”

Nobody had much of a reaction.

“We know,” Ivan and another keeper chorused, annoyed. “We’re not idiots, you know. No offense, but you look very pregnant, and the dragons aren’t exactly being subtle, nor have they been for _weeks_.”

Lily was forced to concede to those points. “Okay, well, my point is that I’m _not_ retiring, so you don’t need to be worried about being out of your jobs.”

Again, nobody looked particularly surprised.

“We know,” Ivan said again. “You? Retire from the dragons? Yeah, right.”

Lily narrowed her eyes at Ivan from behind her glasses. “Another announcement: Ivan’s position will be coming up soon, so if you know anybody trained with dragons who’s less sassy, send them my way.”

Ivan didn’t look the least bit concerned, not that he needed to be. Lily would never fire him. She gestured out towards the surrounding enclosures.

“I don’t want people hovering over me. I’m going to work like normal until I physically can’t anymore, and then I’ll be right here in the office, harassing you all. I’ll decide my own limits. Still my body, I’m still doing what I want. So anybody who says ‘should you really be doing that because of the baby?’ will either get punched or fired. I’ll let you choose. Sound good?”

There was a mingling of affirmatives and salutes and nods. Lily smiled. “Great. Okay, go on! Back to Dragon Land.”

They all scampered off excitedly to return to whatever tasks they’d been in the midst of when Lily called her meeting. Lily went back into her office, threw the window open for some much-needed air, and immediately took her unbuttoned jeans off.

“That’s better,” she told Opal, who’d just stuck his snout through the opened window. She patted his scales and leaned in to kiss just above his nose. He made his rumbling, purring sound in response.

She sat down at her desk, heaved her ankles up onto the edge, and set her stack of unopened letters on her thighs. She rested her head against the back of her chair as she read through them, making notes in the margins every now and then.

“Ah ha—Opal, Ecuador is the first to go nearly six months without one new confirmed case of lime pox. That’s good. This keeper doesn’t say what method they used but they clearly know something we don’t—” she heard the scrape of Opal’s scales against the window frame, and when she glanced up, Opal had taken flight after something, indifferent to their conversation. “Well, fine. It’s not like I was talking to you. Because I wasn’t. I was talking to…the alien-babies.” Lily lifted her letter back up. “ _Alien-babies_ , I think a trip to Ecuador is in order, preferably before I’m the size of a dragon and before Baby Lyra is born…” Lily trailed off. She glanced towards her calendar. Fifteenth of March. Baby Lyra was due early April. “Or not. Damn. We’ll just have to go later on when you both look like actual human babies.”

She was still dredging through letters when she heard her hut door open. There was only one person it could be—he was the only person able to make it unscathed into the hut without all the dragons being restrained safely first.

“Ecuador hasn’t had a case of lime pox—human or dragon—in _six months_ ,” Lily greeted. She scanned her eyes down her current letter. “Things aren’t so great in Hawaii…but they had a flood of runaway poachers arrive there recently…fuck, I wish I’d caught those fuckers before they fled the island…” she ground her teeth and seethed.

“Perfect. Get somebody down to Ecuador to learn their protocol,” Caden suggested. She heard something heavy fall down onto a chair, and when she looked up, she was greeted by a huge box.

“Is that a cot? I thought we agreed we wouldn’t buy anything until after this scan because something could still happen and then we’d be saddled with a really sad cot?”

“No, it’s not a cot,” he said. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin with cots; they sell about a thousand different kinds. This is a family tent.”

Lily brightened. She pushed her ankles off the desk and sat back up with a tiny bit of struggle. She wasn’t too massive yet, but she still wasn’t used to weight being in the places that it was; she was still feeling off balance and dizzy every now and then, though she’d been lifting weights again recently, and that had seemed to help.

“Perfect,” she said happily. She rubbed her hands together. “I call enchanting the inside!! I’ve got the _best_ mental image…”

“Sure, go for it. I got the largest one I could find so you’ll have loads of room to transfigure it. It’ll be great. Plenty of room for the twins to run around. Plenty of fabric so when your mum and dad murder us, they can just roll us up in it and bury us in your dad’s garden if they’re short on tarps.”

Lily gave him a dry look. “Not this again.”

“Yes, this again. You’re eighteen weeks in. We could’ve found out the babies’ sexes two weeks ago. And your parents still have no idea. And when they _do_ find out they’re going to—are you naked from the waist down?”

She’d pulled herself into a standing position just long enough to grab a letter pushed too far to reach while sitting.

“What? No, I’ve got knickers on,” she said. She popped the side of them against her skin. “See? Don’t be ridiculous, Caden, I’m professional.”

“I—you know what, I’ll just let you have that. We’re leaving for London in a little over two weeks, and if you think you’re going to be able to hide this, you’re…a bit delusional?”

Lily grabbed her stomach. “I know I can’t hide _this_ , but I’ve got to find the perfect way to tell them. I’m still looking. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Sure, okay,” he said. He walked over and sat in the chair closest to the window. Opal stuck his snout back in and waited for Caden to pat him. “Here’s an idea. You pick your muggle phone up right now, you call your mum, and you say ‘Mum, I’m having twins.’”

“Mmm…yeah…I dunno…” Lily said. She made another mark in the margins of her letter from a German dragonologist. “I think she’ll freak out if I say that.”

“She’s going to ‘freak out’ no matter how you tell her. You went away and you’re coming back with twins. You literally tripled your existence in a few months. And I know you know that, so what’s the real reason you don’t want to tell them?”

He waited as she made a few more marks on the letter. She could feel his eyes on her. She looked up and met them. She set her quill down with a sigh.

“Every time I ring, it’s Lyra-this and Lyra-that, Albus-this and Albus-that, ‘Scorpius is so excited to be a papa’, ‘Draco cleaned and decorated an entire wing of the Manor for the baby’, ‘Albus already filed for paternity leave’, on and on and on.”

Caden arched an eyebrow. “Lily, you can’t expect them to be equally excited about ours, because _they don’t know they exist_.”

“No, that’s not it,” she persisted. She felt her ears burn. The blush traveled over to her cheeks. She lifted up her letter to hide her face. “I don’t want to take attention away from them.”

There was a short pause.

“That’s…actually really sweet,” Caden finally said.

“Ugh, I know. Don’t remind me,” Lily muttered. She lowered the letter back. She sighed and let a hand fall on her stomach. “I mean, to be clear: I know my pregnancy is going to suck so much worse than Nora’s. I’m not a natural at this. I’m excited for the babies to be here and be part of our lives, but this is kind of sucking, this being massive and having heartburn so bad my food comes up my throat thing. It’s really not enjoyable and I really don’t understand why Nora thinks it’s so amazing; it doesn’t feel like a fun experience, it feels like a difficult—yet brave—sacrifice. But I still don’t think that means I should take attention from Nora or the baby. Albus and Scorpius went through so much more to have their baby than we did. We literally just fucked and I _love_ fucking, so that wasn’t difficult or stressful at all. Granted, I had my existential breakdown after we found out, but it was probably due for a while if we’re being honest. What I’m trying to say is…and if you ever tell anybody I said this I’ll deny it…they deserve the attention more than I do. Baby Lyra deserves all the attention. I _want_ things to be Lyra-this and Lyra-that. I don’t know. I just…I guess I do feel somewhat…protective over her. And when I offered to help them, I knew it was because she’d be loved so fiercely and totally, and she’d have every want and need met, and…it feels wrong to take that away from her now. Our babies are still alien-babies and they won’t be here ‘til August. Lyra needs the doting. Also, I really don’t want people touching my stomach, and they love to do that. All of them. They just grab Nora’s stomach all the time. I think going through this experience is making me love her even more.”

“Okay, _that_ I understand. But what’s your plan, then? Because unless you skip Lyra’s birth and our April trip, they’re going to find out.”

Lily groaned. “Merlin, I know! I just haven’t gotten that far yet with my planning. I don’t know what to do. But I don’t want to tell anybody over the phone. They’ll harass us for ages. Ringing every hour of every day. Mum and Dad would probably get a portkey here the day we said something. And I don’t want them hovering over me.”

She huffed, her stress returning full force. She was constantly torn between wanting to share this with her parents and wanting to do it alone. She wasn’t feeling too stifled right now; she could still do most of the things she loved, and she still felt independent and in control, but if her parents came here, it would turn into a nightmare. She could clearly imagine her mum and dad making her lie on the sofa and sip protein shakes. Fuck no. She’d spent around six months so ill she was hardly able to function. She had no interest in lying around for another five months. She had things to do.

“Well, what if we left a bit earlier than we planned for? You could sit them down and…no, nevermind,” he said, his eyes drifting down to her stomach. “They’ll know from the second they see you.”

“There’s only one option, you know. Just walking right in there like this.”

“Lily, no.”

“‘Hi, Mum, hi, Dad. What? Pregnant? Oh, I _guess I am_ …thanks for pointing it out!’”

“Or you could just ring them right now and tell them that you’re pregnant so they’re prepared.”

“Just not buying it, Caden. It doesn’t really have that _Potter style_.”

He shook his head. “You’re going to end up killing your parents.”

“No, they’ll stick around for the babies. _I_ might be dead to them for a bit…but they’ll want to cuddle the babies. We’ll arrive before Lyra is born, they can all go mad for a few days, and then Lyra will be born and everybody will turn their focus to her because an actually-here baby is better than a secret-baby.”

“There’s nothing secret about those two,” he reminded her.

“Still secret. Nobody can see them, just the bump,” Lily persisted. She glanced at her wristwatch. “Speaking of, it’s nearly time for _you_ to see them. I swear if I catch you looking away this time…” she trailed off darkly.

“Lily, I’ve kept a countdown for this appointment in our kitchen. I’m not going to look away this time. Can you let that go?”

“I’ll think about it.”

* * *

 

“Oh, look at that!! Much less alien-y!” said Lily proudly. The alien-babies looked less like creatures from another planet on the floating image and more like teeny tiny newborns. They were curled up side-by-side this time. Their tiny size was still a bit unsettling. “And they’re not on top of each other anymore? I didn’t know they could move that much.”

“Yes, they have room right now for a lot of undetected movement,” the healer explained.

Lily looked to her side immediately, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. But there was no reason to be worried. Caden was looking at the image this time. His smile was suspiciously sweet; she feared he’d turn into one of those expectant parents who pretended the half-formed babies were adorable rather than weird-looking.

“It _is_ fucking cool,” he finally said to her. Lily relaxed, relieved. He leaned over and kissed her lips. “A tiny bit alien-y, though, you’re right,” he whispered, where only she could hear.

She snickered. “You should’ve looked before!! They actually look somewhat close to real babies now.”

Lily enjoyed watching the twins move about on the image. She sort of wished she could feel it, but she wasn’t looking forward to being kicked in the ribs, so she could remain patient. She and Caden kept up an excited and amused commentary on all the funny things they saw on the image, the healer looking on quietly. Finally, once their conversation lulled, the healer asked:

“Do you want to know the sexes?”

“Fuck yes,” Lily said at once.

“She’s got no patience,” Caden explained. Lily elbowed his gut.

“Baby A—that one—” she pointed at the twin on the left side— “is a boy. Difficult to tell with how he’s lying right now, but you could see it before he flipped.”

A _son_. Lily wasn’t sure how to process that knowledge, but she caught herself smiling.

“If _that one_ is a boy and had to be indicated separately, that must mean…” Caden trailed off.

“Right. Baby B, this one, is a girl. You can see right here, see?”

Lily hadn’t given the sexes of the babies too much thought, and she’d assumed that she didn’t care much either way, but at that, she sat straight up and pumped her fist into the air.

“ _YES_!” she cheered.

The image had faded when she sat up. She felt a brief sting of regret to have it gone. She could’ve watched it all day. Even if she didn’t feel a particularly real bond to the babies yet, she was interested in them and their well-being, and anyway, she liked watching the way they interacted with each other.

“I’m guessing that’s what you wanted?” the healer asked, amused.

“I honestly hadn’t thought about it, but yes! I guess I did! One of each! I like that. I’m…really happy about that,” she realized, growing a bit embarrassed by her outburst of emotion. She cleared her throat. “I mean, yeah. It’s cool.”

She looked over at Caden to gauge his reaction. He had one of those bright, stunning grins on again.

“Brilliant,” he said. He held his hand up beside Lily’s. She smacked her palm against his.

“Fuck yeah,” she grinned. “Go Team.”

He latched their fingers together. “Go Team,” he agreed, pleased.

* * *

 

She was genuinely surprised by how much the knowledge of the baby’s sexes impacted her grasp on the situation. She wasn’t one to think that being born a boy or a girl really had any bearing on one’s personality—she and her brothers had been no different growing up, that she could remember—but being able to picture something as solid as a newborn girl or a newborn boy and know it was _really_ what was inside of her was different and exciting, and it made everything seem more real. It made the babies seem less like a concept and more like a reality.

“I’m naming the girl,” Lily said at once. They’d gone for lunch after the appointment. She was methodically picking things off of her salad. Certain things that she used to love still didn’t sit right with her, like onions. Fuck onions. She had felt extremely wounded and betrayed by them the first time she ate one since getting pregnant and felt her entire body revolt.

“What if I want to name the girl?” he asked.

Lily grimaced and flicked a tomato off her plate and onto the napkin. Also fuck tomatoes. “Do you?”

“I like Adelaide.”

Lily paused her salad dissection. She looked up at her boyfriend incredulously, assuming he was teasing, but he met her eyes seriously.

“…Of course you do...” she finally said. She arched an eyebrow. “Is that the city we fucked in?”

“No. Well, we might have fucked there, who knows, we’ve fucked in a lot of cities. But I like the way it sounds.”

Lily stacked the cucumber slices on her napkin, one on top of another, so it made a small tower. “I’m ninety percent certain we fucked there. In the Bread and Bone toilets. I remember ‘cause I made a joke about ‘bone’ being in the name. And I had a lentil burger and you spilled your drink over your trousers and I was thirty minutes late for my meeting with the local dragonologist because I nearly vomited after trying to apparate.”

A look of realization dawned over his features. “Oh _yeah_ …well, the baby doesn’t ever have to know that. I have good intentions; that’s not why I like it.”

“But I want a flower name,” Lily said. “See, Aster and I have this plan. I’ll name my baby after a flower, like I am—well, really after my late grandmother, but it’s also a flower—and she’ll name her baby after a flower, like _she is_ , and they’ll be best friends, and when they’re old enough, they can get _their name flowers_ tattooed on _their inner wrists_ , just like me and Aster.” She turned her hand over and exposed the lily on her wrist.

“That’s adorable. You sure you don’t want to just raise our babies with Aster?”

Lily blinked innocently. “Is that an option?”

He kicked her beneath the table. She beamed back at him, amused. He smiled back.

“What flower?” he asked. “Because I have serious reservations about naming a baby Dandelion.”

“Ooh, _Dandelion_ , that’s a thought,” Lily teased. She tapped her chin. “It has _lion_ in the name. A strong Gryffindor _and_ my Patronus form.”

“No.”

“Yes. You can’t fight the Gryffindor genes. They’re strong.”

“Tell that to Albus. Which flower were you thinking?”

She turned back to her salad and continued picking through it. She was afraid to look at him; saying the name out loud felt oddly vulnerable. “Iris.”

She had picked every unforgivable thing from her plate by the time he responded.

“I actually really like that,” he admitted.

She looked up. She smiled, relieved. “Really?”

“Yeah. We can use my name as the middle one?”

“Yeah, okay,” she agreed at once. She ran the name through her mind. She smiled. “Yeah, I like that! Wow—we’re doing good fucking work today, Caden. Bought a family tent. Saw the babies punch each other. Named one of them. Merlin, we might actually be good at this.”

“Don’t get too excited…we still don’t have any baby items,” he reminded her.

“Spoilsport,” she muttered. She let her hands fall back into her lap. She smiled at her mended salad. “There we go!”

She felt Caden’s eyes on her as she stabbed her fork into her salad.

“That is _literally_ just lettuce now. You picked everything else out. Merlin, even the _cheese_?! What’s wrong with you?!”

“You impregnated me with twins! Ask again! I dare you!”

“…Delicious looking lettuce, Lily.”

“Thank you. Prat.”

She had what felt like a spiritual experience as she ate her lunch. Something about the crispness of the lettuce was extremely satisfying. She wasn’t going to question it.

“Why don’t we do the same for the boy? I’ll take the first name, you take the middle,” Caden suggested.

“Phoenix,” Lily said at once, around a mouthful of lettuce.

“…We can both have two vetos like Albus and Scorpius did. I’m giving ‘Phoenix’ a no.”

“ _Spoil-fucking-sport_ ,” Lily reiterated. “Lion.”

“You’re just trying to get me to use up my last veto so you can drop your _real_ suggestion right afterwards. I know you.”

“Damn. Fine, what are your suggestions?”

“Hmm…Stone…Ranger…”

Lily stared at him. She pointedly put another forkful of lettuce in her mouth, so he’d know she wasn’t fazed and she wasn’t going to waste her vetos.

“Okay, in all seriousness, I like ‘Samuel’.”

Lily scrunched up her nose. “Ugh, really? _Why?_ ”

He finished chewing before responding. “What do you mean why?! What’s wrong with it?”

“Everything is wrong with it. Do you want our child to be called ‘mule’ for his entire life?” she demanded. “Vetoed.”

“John?”

“More like ‘Yawn’.”

“What if we named him after somebody?”

“Oh, yeah. Little Scorpius Albus.” Lily grimaced. “Ugh, the worst thing is…I think my parents would actually really love that.”

“Ugh,” Caden agreed. “No, we’ll let James carry on that particular tradition.”

“I’m glad we can agree on that.”

They finished lunch and started their walk to the bus stop. Lily wasn’t allowed to apparate anymore, leaving her only options for travel the Floo system and muggle transport, and it was impossible to Floo from Muggle areas. As they arrived at the bus stop, a middle-aged man immediately stood when they approached.

“Here,” he said, offering his spot to Lily. She bristled. Caden stepped in before she lost it.

“Thanks, but she’s supposed to stand. Heal—er. Doctor’s orders.”

Lily stubbornly stood until the bus arrived, refusing to even lean against the pole right beside her for support. Once they were seated, Lily leaned over.

“It’s beginning,” she told him ominously. “When people start seeing the belly first and me second. I don’t like it.”

“I know. We could get you a shirt that says “fucking leave me alone”,” he suggested. 

Lily peered out of the window thoughtfully. That was an idea.

* * *

 

She was on the phone with her brother the day before her and Caden’s departure. Albus was happier than she’d ever heard him, though there was an undercurrent of franticness to his tone, with Lyra due practically any day now. There had been another amazing development, too: he was a lot kinder to her than usual. Lily had noticed that with both her absence and Lyra’s growth, her brother was becoming gradually nicer and warmer towards her.

“Nora was having contractions last night so Scorpius and I went over there, but they were false ones, Scorpius said,” Albus shared. Lily heard something crash from his end of the line. “Ouch—damn.”

“You all right?” she asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Putting together a muggle baby swing. Or trying to. These instructions are horrible.”

Lily perked up. “Oh, switch it and show them to me! I’m _excellent_ at putting muggle things together! Last night I put together a—a…” _oops._ She’d put together one of the only baby things she’d ever found that genuinely excited her: a bicycle that was half pram. The back was like a regular muggle bike and the front had side-by-side carrycots for tiny babies to ride in. It even grew with the babies—the carrycots turned into seats for toddlers. The muggles could be quite ingenious, even without magic. But she couldn’t exactly tell Albus about that. “A…” she scrounged for something as far from baby-related products as possible. “…sex swing all by myself.”

“Ugh! Lily, _please don’t tell me that_! What is _wrong_ with you?!”

“What’s wrong with _me_? Nothing. I put it together all by myself. C’mon, switch it over and let me help.”

“I can’t look you in the eye now. Ever again. A sex swing? _Really_?”

“You’ll get over it. You got over that time you overheard us on Christmas Eve.”

“Who said I was over that?!” grumbled Albus, but he switched the call over a second later. Lily was greeted by the sight of chaos.

“Oh, wow,” she said. She eyed all the scattered pieces. Some were so far away that it appeared as if he’d thrown them. “Okay. Let me see the instructions.”

“I think this is probably a bit more complicated than a sex swing, Lily.”

 _Not more complicated than a fucking bicycle-pram_ , she thought, but she kept that to herself. “I can handle it.”

It was oddly…nice. Helping her brother put together baby things. She realized that her babies would be in the same year as Lyra. They would probably be close. She and her brother were sort of going through this life transition at the same time. As Lyra’s baby swing came together piece by piece, Lily longed to tell Albus about her situation. She wanted to pan the camera down and show him that she was pregnant. She wanted to talk about this with him, wanted to know if he’d dealt with some of the emotions that she had, too. But she was afraid. Maybe, deep down, it had less to do with wanting to keep the focus on Lyra, and more to do with her fear of what her family would think.

“ _Finally_!” Albus celebrated. He climbed up and backed up, turning the phone so Lily could see the complete swing. It looked exactly like the photo on the instruction booklet. “Thanks, Lulu.”

“Yeah, no problem!” she said. Her stomach clenched nervously; she felt a strange fluttery motion. She rubbed over her belly and took a deep breath. “Albus…”

“Yeah?” he asked. He turned the phone back around and looked at her. “What’s going on?”

“I…” she rubbed harder over her belly, distracted again by what was either nervous butterflies or rumbling digestion. “I, uh…”

“Scorpius!” Albus cried suddenly. Lily heard a door close from his end. Her brother scrambled to his feet and ran towards Scorpius; the image shook so hard that it made Lily a bit dizzy. “Scorpius, look. Come here.”

“Albus…!”

Albus hardly heard him or noticed his pale face, but Lily did. She eyed Scorpius suspiciously as Albus dragged his stunned husband into the sitting room where the baby swing was waiting. “I did this! I put this together!”

“Oh…! It’s nice…!”

“Lily helped. And she’s still feeling better, you know; the potion’s side effects are completely gone. That’s good, right? Lily, tell him.” Albus put the phone in front of Scorpius’s face. Lily waved.

“Yep. Potion side-effects are gone,” Lily said truthfully. _Mostly. You can technically count these unborn babies as a side-effect, though._

“That’s great! Albus…Nora’s having contractions again. I was just over there. _Real_ contractions.”

The screen shook and went black. Going by the muffled sounds of excited yelling, Albus had dropped it carelessly to the carpet.

“Oi!” Lily yelped. “HEY! WAIT, SERIOUSLY, PICK ME BACK UP, I NEED TO KNOW IF WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR FLIGHT!”

She got a quick glimpse of the Potter-Malfoy’s living room as Scorpius lifted the phone back up. He was grinning; Lily spotted tears in his grey eyes. “Don’t worry about it! I’ll get you a portkey! When can you leave?”

Lily’s heart plummeted. She wasn’t allowed to use portkeys anymore; she was too far along. “No. I can’t. I mean, I need to fly there. So how long til she has the baby?”

“There’s no way to know for sure but I’d guess within the day! Albus, will you go Floo my dad?!”

“Yeah!! Yes!” Albus cried.

Scorpius looked back at her. “Why can’t you use a portkey? Surely that’s more enjoyable than twenty or so hours of traveling?”

“I, uh…I have airline miles. You know, they give you credits for every time you fly somewhere, and I need to use mine before they expire. Like a voucher.”

“But I don’t know if you’ll make it on time, even if you left within the hour on a plane,” Scorpius said. He sounded terribly disappointed.

“I knew we should’ve arrived a full week before the due date week,” Lily grumbled. “Not the week of.”

“Can’t you just use your airplane vouchers another time?” Scorpius begged. “You and Caden can go on holiday somewhere or something!”

“I can’t. They expire,” Lily said miserably.

He frowned. He looked over his shoulder. “Albus, don’t contact Hermione. Lily says she doesn’t need a portkey.”

“What?! Why not?!”

“She’s flying.”

“But she won’t make it in time! Lily, you probably won’t make it!” Albus cried, outraged.

She knew they probably thought she was horrible. And she wanted to defend herself. She wanted to say _I do love you both. I want to be there for you. I’m spending an inhuman number of hours on a sodding muggle airplane when I’m twenty-one weeks pregnant with twins: that’s how much I love you._ But she couldn’t get the words out, not even in her own defense.

She told them she’d check to see if there were any flights leaving before hers tomorrow and made them promise to keep her updated. She ended the call with the nagging suspicion that she’d really let them down. She was in the process of cramming the folded clothes covering the bed into the suitcase—so they’d be ready the second they figured out their travel plans—when the phone rang again. Lily answered at once.

“What’s happening?!”

“Lily, don’t change your flight,” her sister-in-law greeted. She sounded remarkably calm. Lily had anticipated extreme groans of pain and misery. “Scorpius is getting a bit…restless. Everything is fine—I’ve got plenty of time still, I can tell. Keep your regular flight. There’s no point in you rushing here right now. You won’t make it in time even if I do give birth tonight, anyway.”

Lily dropped another shirt into her suitcase. “Are you sure?! I don’t want to miss it.”

“I’m sure. And even if I do, the baby will still be there when you arrive, okay?” Nora lowered her voice. “Scorpius has Draco here to help ‘escort me’ to St. Mungo’s…as if we might be attacked by ex-Death Eaters on the ride over…”

Lily grinned. “I really wish I wasn’t missing that. Sounds fun, Nora. Er, how’s the pain?”

“Eh—pretty low on the pain scale compared to my other babies. I haven’t even needed any Labor Potion yet. To be honest, I wish I could just do a relaxed, peaceful home birth…but Albus has already headed to St. Mungo’s to ‘ready the room’…whatever that means…”

“Where is James in all this? He’s usually right in the action when it’s baby time,” Lily wondered. She was privately relieved to hear that the pain wasn’t _always_ excruciatingly unbearable, though it didn’t really matter much for her situation: multiples were nearly always delivered via magical cesarean.

“Jamie’s staying home with the kids.” Something in Nora’s voice told Lily not to question it too much, but she was overcome with curiosity. That might’ve been the strangest thing she’d heard all year, second only to learning that she was pregnant.

“Really? You’re going by yourself? Why?” asked Lily, confused. She couldn’t help but think about how terrifying it’d be to birth _her babies_ without Caden there. “That sounds really awful.”

“Clem and Evvie are coming to be my coaches, I won’t be alone,” Nora reassured her. “We just thought it would be better this way.”

“ _You_ thought it would be better that way…there’s no way James came up with that idea.”

“It really was mutual and it really is okay. We just…well, we want to make sure we keep it all…in perspective. If I had James there it’d feel too much like my other births. And you know James; if he held Lyra directly afterwards, he’d be a goner. It’s better to have a bit of distance.”

Lily couldn’t imagine how them being separated for what could end up being a painful and traumatizing ordeal could be a good thing, but she was less willing to judge any woman on what she decided to do when it came to pregnancy than she’d once been. She had learned rather quickly that there were an astounding amount of grey areas.

“I really hope everything goes well,” she told her sister-in-law, and she meant it.

She folded and packed away the clothes until her feet began aching, and then she collapsed down onto the sofa to have a rest with Big Boy. He was headed back to the sanctuary to be watched over in Lily and Caden’s absence and he was not going to be happy about it. He already seemed particularly sulky; Lily wondered if the humans who had stolen him and raised him had taught him what a suitcase meant (abandonment). Lily propped her feet on the coffee table and stroked his scales with her left hand, her right falling naturally on top of her stomach. She was beginning to get glimpses of how horrible the last stretch of this pregnancy would be. She couldn’t see her feet anymore, absolutely none of her clothes fit, her feet and her hips ached with grinding pain when she stood too long, and getting up and down from the sofa was an embarrassing ordeal. The past two weeks at work had been more difficult than she was willing to admit. She just couldn’t move like she once could, and it was frustrating and disorienting at times because she still _felt_ like she was strong and agile. When she thought of herself, she still pictured the body she had before all of this began. She kept trying to do the things she always did, only to find that they were near-impossible with her large belly. _Near_ because Lily refused to give up; she’d work twice as hard as she had before to make everything she was doing seem equally effortless. With all the struggles she’d already encountered, she couldn’t imagine how inconvenient pregnancy was for muggle women. At least Lily could summon things she couldn’t bend over to pick up, levitate things she couldn’t carry, enchant her razor to shave her legs (an ordeal that had turned into a bit of an obstacle course around her bump when she tried to do it the muggle way), and tie her shoes with a flick of her wand. Lily could make up for a lot of her size-related difficulties with magic, but she was finding that using magic constantly wasn’t always a very reliable solution. Her exhaustion was a constant problem—which was normal, her healer had promised; after all, she was sustaining three times the life she had before—and it took a toll on her magical abilities. After using magic for things she wouldn’t have bothered using it for beforehand all morning and afternoon, by bedtime it took three times the amount of stamina it usually did to do basic spells. She was worried about what the last trimester would bring. She would undoubtedly be even more tired, what with carrying such extreme weight around without rest, trying to maneuver around with a mountain-sized belly, and needing to use magic for probably _everything,_ and she had a feeling she was not going to handle it well. Needing somebody else’s help just to do basic everyday things was going to be hard to swallow for somebody as independent as her, and even though it felt very powerful to know that she could singlehandedly develop two entire babies, she was certain that being too tired to even preform a summoning spell was going to be a strong hit to her pride.

She was considering taking a nap while she waited to hear more from her brothers, comforted by the warmth of Big Boy’s scales against the side of her thigh and the perfect pillow positioning she’d finally figured out for her lower back, but right as she began to drift off, she heard the door open.

“Lil?”

“In here. Can’t get up. Big Boy’s asleep,” she yawned.

Lily forced her eyelids up when his footsteps got closer. She smiled softly as Caden stepped through the doorway. His arms were laden with shopping bags. He stopped dead in the doorway and appraised her, his lips quirking up into an amused, affectionate smile.

“What?” Lily asked.

“You’re looking…”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Lily warned lowly.

“What if I was going to say ‘beautiful’?”

“Then especially don’t finish it. Soppy.” She nodded at the shopping bags. “What’d you buy? It’s not more outdoor baby gear, is it? Because I realized today that we haven’t bought _one thing_ that’s for the house. We’ve got baby carriers, family tent, baby swimsuits, bicycle pram…but no cot. And did you know you’re supposed to buy, like, _things_ that go into the sink? To hold the baby when you bathe it? I always thought you could fold a tea-towel up to make a little cradle for the floppy baby heads, but apparently, you have to buy particular things to bathe them in.”

“I was honestly hoping that Nora and James would loan us all of that stuff. They probably have ten of everything,” he pointed out. “I already set aside money to pay extra baggage fees on the way back.”

Lily gave him a thumbs-up. “Brilliant. I didn’t think about that. Good idea.”

He walked over and set the shopping bags down on the coffee table. She tried to lean forward to peek into them, but her stomach stopped her from making it very far. She gave up and fell back against the sofa with an annoyed grunt.

“What’d you buy?” she asked again.

“Things for the airplane.”

Lily eyed the heavy bags. “That’s a lot of shit for the airplane. We’ll have to take the bag with the extension charm. Are you a bit nervous about the flight?” Lily reached out towards him. He walked over and sat on her other side. She grabbed his hand and set it atop her stomach just so she could say, in a mocking voice: “Worried the babies will be afraid of heights?”

“No,” he said evenly, his other hand settling on the underside of her stomach. “Worried about sitting beside _you_ for twenty-six hours.”

“I already tried to request a change of seat, but they said we were too late.”

“Damn. Guess I’m stuck with you.”

“Guess _I’m_ stuck with _you_ ,” Lily corrected. She pulled her wand from the crack between the sofa cushions and summoned the nearest bag to herself. It was much heavier than expected; she jumped as it slammed down onto her thighs.

“What the hell did you buy?! Bricks?!” Lily demanded. She leaned over and peeked into the bags. “Oh. Books. _1000 Classic Baby Names._ Next. _Bird Species of Ecuador._ Old man. _Top Fifteen Unsolved Arsons_. Ooh, mine?” She flipped through the muggle book eagerly. “I bet at least ten of these fifteen were caused by dragons.”

“It’s yours,” he affirmed. “You were mumbling about arson the other morning.”

“Anybody else would find that terrifying with a dragon in the room.”

“Big Boy would _never…_ I’m his favorite parent. I just figured you’d chosen this topic for your next journal article.”

“It’s disgusting how well you know me. I _am_ thinking about researching that.”

She set those three to the side and continued pulling the others out. “ _Wilderness First-Aid_. Useful, I guess. Better than bird-stalking. _Gardening with Grandchildren: A Keepsake Journal_. Caden, what the fuck.”

“For your dad. In case he needs some softening up. He likes his grandkids and his plants. I figured it was probably safe.”

“Oh _Merlin_ , there are more! There’s no way you’re going to read all these!” Lily cried.

“Nah, but I’ll skim through them.”

She shuffled through the remaining books. “ _Rockclimbing for Toddlers. Surfing with Tots. Great Walks of New Zealand. Tramping with Babies_ —did you just buy out the entire section on cool parenting?”

“Pretty much.”

Lily set the books on what remained of her lap and shot him a quick, fond look. He didn’t miss it. She smiled as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and brought her to his side. She thumbed through _Great Walks of New Zealand_ as he rubbed her belly. She didn’t mind it much when he did it (usually), but she’d nearly crawled out of her skin and devoured somebody alive when they reached out to touch it on the street a few days prior. She had felt the most intense surge of defensiveness; it had left her feeling a bit strange afterwards.

Lily updated him on what she’d heard from Scorpius and Nora, and with her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed, and his hand still on her stomach, she felt a strange sensation inside of her. Not quite a muscle spasm, but close to it; it was noticeable enough in her calm state to make her reach immediately for her stomach. Her hand landed on Caden’s.

“What?” he asked.

“I dunno,” she lied. She let her hand slide back down. She felt a strange fluttering in her gut, but she didn’t know if it was her sudden anticipation or something else. She’d been feeling things like it for the past week, but she didn’t want to be a soppy idiot and tell herself it was the babies if it wasn’t, so she’d ignored it and told herself that she’d _definitely_ know if it was. However, this time, the sensations were strange enough to make her think twice, and that probably meant something. She quickly prodded the top of her belly curiously. Nothing. She jabbed the side. Nope. The other one. No, but that time hurt; she’d pressed fairly hard.

“Okay. What are you doing?”

“Nothing. What sort of food did you get for the plane?”

They went through all his purchases and packed them up in their airplane bag with the extension charm. She had hoped to get a good night’s rest before their day of travel tomorrow, but that night, she tossed and turned for hours. Comfort eluded her, and whenever she was just beginning to drift off, she became aware of those same movements in her stomach. She wished she’d never noticed that they were anything special because now she felt hyperaware of her gut in a way that was a bit aggravating.

“Look,” she heard herself snap. It was nearing three. “It’s one thing to take over somebody’s body, but could you _at least_ respect their sleeping schedule? Quiet hours are _officially_ between the hours of midnight and five.”

She’d been talking to the babies, frustrated by whatever they were doing to cause those weird twitching and fluttering movements, but she roused her boyfriend.

“What? I didn’t do anything…I’m sleeping…”

Lily sighed his way. “Not _you_. _Them_.”

“What…?”

“Go back to sleep.”

She gave up on sleep and retreated to the kitchen. She glanced at the time on her phone; it was nearly three that afternoon back in England. She made a cup of tea and sat at the table with her phone in hand. She rang her dad.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” he greeted.

“Long story,” she evaded. “Dad, what’s happening? Did Nora ever go into actual labor?”

“She’s been stopping and starting since early this morning. We’re still at St. Mungo’s. It’ll definitely be within a day or so, but nobody really feels confident enough to make a more precise estimate anymore. Lu, they said you refused to take a portkey?”

“Yeah. Er. Don’t tell anybody but…it always makes me feel nauseated and…with what I went through after the potions and everything I don’t want to risk feeling like that again. I’m afraid it won’t ever stop,” she lied. It was fairly convincing, in her opinion.

“Oh,” her dad said. “I think I’d probably have a fear of nausea too if I’d been through what you have.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She didn’t say that it was her morning sickness with her actual babies that had been the worst of all, but the memory of that phase of her never-ending discomfort was definitely the truly traumatizing one. She dropped a hand back to her belly when the twitching began again. What the hell were they doing in there? She had always anticipated kicks, but she was learning that there was a plethora of bizarre shit they could do in there. She wondered if they were responsible for what she’d felt the night prior; she’d been nearly asleep when she felt her stomach roll, sort of like it did right after she dropped midair from her broom during a game of _Catapult Lily_. She was slowly putting together a lot of things she’d previously overlooked.

“How are things there? Everything packed?”

“Mostly,” Lily said. Their suitcase was largely Caden’s stuff because she’d refused to buy more than the very bare minimum of maternity clothes. Aster had already promised to let her have whatever she wanted from her newest line once she returned home (and had already designed a few pieces especially for Lily; she and Hugo were weirdly excited about all of this.) “Is Albus going mad?”

Her dad laughed. He lowered his voice; Lily guessed he was near family. “Wish you were here to see it. When Scorpius isn’t subjecting Nora to unnecessary scans, he’s planning out baby Lyra’s daily wardrobe on a calendar. For fun. Albus is beside himself, I don’t think he really knows how to feel. He paces loads. Keeps buying things from the gift shop only to realize on the way up that Baby Lyra has more than enough, so then he goes to return it…he’s returned the same teddy bear three times.”

Lily laughed along with her dad, amused by the mental image. “Poor Nora. If she still hasn’t given birth by the time I arrive, tell her I’ll save her from the Hysterical Dads.”

As she imagined what she’d find when she got to the hospital, she remembered, with a quick wave of terror, that everybody would soon know. Including her dad. And at the root of her reluctance, even if she didn’t want to admit it, it was his judgement that she had been most concerned with. She was afraid that he’d tell her she’d made the wrong choice. She was afraid that he’d tell her that she couldn’t do it, that she was too young, too wild, too reckless, too selfish. It would cut her so deeply to hear that, and instinctively, she knew that it would severely impact her mindset the rest of the pregnancy. She didn’t care what Rose said. She only mildly cared what Albus said. She wasn’t worried about what her mum or James would say; she felt they would understand her easily, each in their own way. But her dad? Would he feel as she had once felt, that having babies meant giving up her autonomy, her life, her success? Would he see her as weaker? Would he be disappointed? Would he blame Caden? Or would he understand? It wasn’t enough for him to respect her decision. She needed him to understand it, too. And she’d never had faith in her ability to put her emotions into words.

“Dad?”

“Lulu?”

She chose her words very carefully. “Did you always know what your life would look like?”

“Me? At seventeen, I was certain I’d be dead within the year. Right after the war, before your mum and I got back together, I was certain I’d be alone for the rest of my life. I was probably a bit depressed, looking back…”

“‘Cause I always thought that I knew. When I was thirteen, I saw myself here, with dragons. Even with Caden. For most of my adult life, it’s been exactly as I always imagined it…but this year…” she trailed off. “Everything’s changing. Aster’s marrying _Hugo_. Albus is becoming a dad. I—well, I guess it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around all these changes because they aren’t changes that I ever expected. And I’m not the person that I always thought I’d be.”

“Yeah, well. That’s life,” her dad said. She could hear the smile his voice. “And thank Merlin for that, yeah? If life always turned out the way we expected it to when we were young, I’d be dead, or at best a traumatized bachelor living off Calming Draughts.” 

Lily laughed. “Like Mum would’ve let you end up either way.”

“Yeah, fair,” her dad agreed, amused. “I think it comes down to that. The right people have a way of coming into your life at the right time, even if you weren’t expecting them. Even if you thought you weren’t ready. After the war, I was certain I couldn’t love your mum the way she deserved. I was certain I wasn’t ready to love anybody that way. But then I _did_ and I _was_ and…had one thing been different…had things gone the way that I’d expected…I’d be a completely different person now. You wouldn’t even exist. Even you, Lily! You were unexpected in every way. One moment your mum and I were Ginny and Harry with their two Potter boys, and the next your mum’s beating down my office door to tell me she’s pregnant. I wouldn’t have expected that. But blimey, am I glad that it happened anyway.”

The love she felt from him made her eyes burn. She blamed it on the hormones.

“Only because your life would’ve been so _boring_ without me. I keep you on your toes,” she joked.

“If truer words have ever been spoken, _I’ve_ never heard them,” her dad muttered. Lily laughed. Her heart felt warm to the core. The anxiousness that had been gnawing at her abated.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” she realized, a bit sheepishly. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Of course. I’m glad I said the right thing. Can I tell your mum? What would you rate it?”

“A ten out of ten,” she said honestly. “No. A fucking twenty out of ten, Dad.”

“Seriously?! That’s the Potter parent record, I think.”

“You deserve it,” she admitted. She’d planned on following up with a joke about James’s continued influence on the Potters’ self-assessment of their parenting when she felt an entirely different sensation in her belly, this time closer to the surface. She fell quiet. After waiting a moment more, she felt it again, quick and jabbing near the front of her belly: a weak kick, perhaps, or maybe a gut punch. For some reason, that clear movement made it all feel real to her in a way the ambiguous flutters hadn’t; she could see, in her mind’s eye, the twins moving about on the scan. And with a rush of emotion, just for a brief second, she was fully aware that they were inside of her, that they were _hers_. Briefly, she’d wrapped her head around the overwhelming concept of what was happening to her. But it passed as soon as it’d come, leaving her once again in that state of interested incredulity. And yet…she was smiling. Because that brief surge of wonder and possessiveness was probably the deepest emotion she’d felt thus far for the unborn babies (save the time she’d nearly murdered a muggle stranger for trying to touch her belly). She wasn’t quite ready to say that she loved them. It all still felt a bit too surreal at times. She didn’t know the babies yet, and for her, love took time. But for the first time, for a tiny moment, she’d felt genuinely and completely connected to the forming life inside of her, like it really was a part of her, like she was more than just _Lily_ now (not less than Lily— _more than_ , better, stronger). From that moment on, the twins were protected for life. Lily wasn’t one to let anybody fuck with _her_ people, and she knew now that they were hers. She had once run across the darkness, a massive portion of her body burnt to the point of shock, somehow conscious despite all logistic possibilities, subconsciously aware that to continue might mean death, and still she ran. And right then, with her hand on her belly and her heart full, she felt— with absolute certainty— that she would’ve made that near-death run through the darkness again for these babies, too. Even getting on the level of her love for her dragons was an awesome feat, and Lily felt certain that, in time, her love for these babies would reach an even higher level yet.

She thanked her dad again, promised to ring before she and Caden left tomorrow, and then returned to the bedroom. She stopped short in the doorway because Big Boy had taken her spot on the bed. He stirred as he sensed her presence; Lily saw the space between his teeth glowing red like embers as flames built up his throat with a rumbling growl.

“Oi. It’s me,” Lily reminded him, unfazed. At the sound of her voice, he calmed at once. She yawned a moment later and padded over towards the bed. He made to climb off—having learned by now that Lily wouldn’t allow bed-sharing—but she was feeling oddly lenient.

“No, you can stay,” she told him. She pressed gently on his scaly back, urging him back to his previous space. He rested his chin back on her pillow. “ _Just this once, though_. Okay?”

He settled back down with a satisfied hum. Lily climbed carefully over him and then squeezed between Big Boy and Caden. There wasn’t much room at all. Even lying on her side, her stomach was pressed hard against Caden’s hip, and she could feel Big Boy’s tail scales poking her back. She admired her boyfriend’s handsome face in the dim light, gently stroked his hair back from his forehead, leaned in close, and loudly hissed: “CADEN!”

He jolted awake with an alarmed gasp. His wide, panicked eyes met Lily’s.

“What?! Is Lyra born? What?”

“No. Not yet, don’t worry.”

He sat up slightly and squinted down at her. “If you woke me up like that to tell me about your recurring ice cream dream again I’m going to tie myself to the railroad tracks outside our door. There’s no big meaning. You just crave mint ice cream.”

She scoffed. “No trains will be on that track until tomorrow. Think bigger.”

He swatted at her with hilariously poor aim. She evaded it effortlessly.

“I’ll jump out of the airplane midflight, how’s that?”

“Better,” Lily approved. She rested her head on his shoulder. He gradually relaxed back against the pillows. When his arm went around her, she grabbed his hand and pulled it over, setting it on her stomach of her own accord. Even exhausted and probably still half-asleep, he didn’t miss it.

“What? Is something wrong?”

“No,” she reassured him. She closed her eyes and felt a yawn work itself up her throat. She tugged the blankets over her with her right hand. “I can feel them move now.”

He lifted his head and peered down at her. His hand pressed harder against her stomach like he thought he’d be able to feel it, too. She heard a very familiar wonder in his tone when he spoke next.

“Seriously? Just now?”

“All night.”

He slid his hand down to the bottom of her stomach as if he might be able to feel it from _that_ spot. “What’s it feel like?”

“Fucking weird. Really unexpected. But cool. Sort of like our life.”

He kept his hand there as she drifted off to sleep.


	14. II. Constellation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius and Albus begin the next chapter of their lives. The Weasleys and the Potters find themselves faced with something they never expected. The Potter-Malfoys balance on the thin line between independence and stubbornness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long wait! I've been going through a lot and haven't been able to write much, but I hope there are readers left and I hope you forgive me for the wait ♥

It felt odd to be at St. Mungo’s as ‘the patient’s family’ rather than the healer.

Scorpius paced the floor of the hospital room and struggled with his intermingled feelings of excitement and anxiety, trying his hardest to ward off the helpless feeling that always accompanied him when he was in St. Mungo’s as a loved one (a feeling that had certainly arisen from all the times he’d been here with his mum.) He had thought that he’d be impervious to anxiety—since he saw childbirth on a daily basis and certainly felt nothing even akin to doubt about finally meeting his daughter—but from the first step he’d taken into the hospital, his mind had taken a completely different route. Instead of confident excitement, he was plagued with the sorts of worries that made thinking painful. He couldn’t stop himself from catastrophizing everything: what if something happened to Lyra? What if something happened to Nora? What would they do without their daughter? What would they do if this act of charity cost their sister her life?

Hospitals had long ago morphed from places of anxiety and loss into something Scorpius felt he could control and understand…but standing there, watching Victoire tend to Nora, knowing with a healer’s knowledge all the different things that could go wrong to cost their daughter or their sister their lives…he felt very much like his thirteen-year-old self again. And it was difficult to swallow. And when he felt like that—when time marched backwards, when he felt uncertain and lost and frightened—he wanted Albus most of all.

But Albus was dealing with this in an entirely unexpected way, too. He and Scorpius had spent months excitedly planning for this moment, right down to the outfits they’d wear when they finally met Lyra and the shoes she’d wear home. But now, faced with Lyra’s actual, impending arrival, Scorpius’s husband had reverted to two familiar personas: aloof, emotionally-stressed and repressed Albus (the sort that ran away to the gift shop every time Victoire even slightly referenced anything that could go wrong during the birth), and hovering, obstinate Albus (the sort who, for example, insisted that he fluff up Nora’s pillows _just right_ in a manner similar to how he’d insisted that they go back in time and correct his father’s ‘error’ in their fifth year; his heart was in the right place, certainly, but that notion that _he alone_ could come up with the proper solution to fix everything was a bit overbearing.)

So the opportunities to cling to Albus and possibly sob into his shoulder were few and far between. Albus spent his time either frantically running between the room and the gift shop or hovering over Nora to the point that Scorpius thought she would have been well within her rights to send Albus home. It would take a lot to bring her to say that, but as Albus leaned over her during another contraction to harass her about chocolate, Scorpius thought she might be pushed to that point soon enough.

“C’mon, Nora! Chocolate helps everything!” Albus proclaimed. He waved a basket full of every sort of chocolate beneath her nose. “What do you think? What types? There’s chocolate frogs—a great choice, in my opinion—or some cockroach clusters or a box of Honeyduke’s chocolates or some chocolate cauldrons or—”

Evvie and Clementine had been sitting to the side, their heads bowed over one of Evvie’s muggle devices as they searched for a Muggle film Nora had requested, but at that, the former Slytherin Head Girl rose. Scorpius watched her warily as she walked over to his husband. He stepped closer to Albus, too, and protectively set a hand on his lower back, just in case Albus was in trouble. For a long moment, Evvie observed Albus through slightly narrowed eyes, clearly trying to decide what to do with him. Albus narrowed his eyes back at her.

“What?” he snapped.

She gestured towards the door. “Come into the hall. Let’s have a talk.”

Albus balked as if she’d just suggested shaving his head. “No! I’m not!” Her eyebrow rose. Albus squared his jaw. “No! You can’t make me. You’re not the boss of me!”

She narrowed her eyes more. Albus did, too. Scorpius looked between them uncertainly. After a full half-minute under her eerily challenging gaze, Albus shuffled back a bit.

“Fine. A _quick_ talk,” he muttered. He pointed at her sternly. “ _Quick_!”

Scorpius glanced over his shoulder nervously as Evvie walked Albus from the room. His husband grimaced back at him. Scorpius felt like they were fifteen again and awaiting a detention sentence. Once the two had disappeared into the hall, Scorpius pulled his stool over and sat at Nora’s bedside. He summoned her next dose of labor potion, and as he monitored her pulse, he could hear some very distinctive Slytherin bickering beginning from outside of the hospital room. He looked worriedly at Clementine, wondering if he should ask her to intervene. He didn’t want anybody to fight. This was supposed to be a happy occasion, not a stressful one.

“I knew we couldn’t make it an hour before somebody argued,” Victoire greeted. She set her cup of tea down on the side table and collapsed casually at the foot of Nora’s bed. She was technically her healer right now, but nobody would’ve known if they’d just stepped inside; she cast the fetal monitoring charm while lying across the foot of Nora’s bed, chatting with her and Clementine about some Louis-related drama Scorpius was in the dark on. Scorpius couldn’t care much about it; he was primarily concerned with his husband. He started edging toward the doorway, to make sure Albus wasn’t getting into a genuine argument that would lead to negative feelings for everybody involved (he didn’t want his little family—Albus and Lyra—to remember this day negatively), but his progress was intercepted.

“Scorpius,” Clementine began. “It’s fine. He needs to be reined in. I mean, we know Albus means well…-”

“I love him and appreciate his compassion,” Nora said at once. It sounded a bit apologetic. Scorpius could tell where this was going.

Clem continued. “And Nora’s _clearly_ too nice to say anything to him about—”

“I _do_ want him to be a part of this, he should get to see his daughter being born. Both of you should!” Nora interrupted quickly. Her unsaid _but…_ hung in the air. 

“BUT,” Clementine countered sternly. “He’s driving her mad. You too a bit, actually.”

Scorpius’s heart fell. The thought that he and Albus were making this _worse_ for Nora was a bit nauseating. All he wanted was for everybody to get through this as happily and safely as possible. “What?! Really?!”

Nora grimaced. Scorpius honestly didn’t know if it was from more oncoming pain or guilt.

“Yeah. Absolutely mad, actually,” Nora admitted, her voice small. She rushed to defend herself. “I know he’s not meaning to—I know he just wants to help—but, well, chocolate and the pillow fluffing and…I just want to be left alone, really. Do you understand? When you’re in a lot of pain, you don’t really want to…chat, or have somebody ask you a million questions…I just want somebody to hold my hand and reassure me, and I’ve got my girls for that, so…if you two could just…relax a bit. That would _really_ help.”

“Oh,” Scorpius said, his voice small. He fiddled with the fabric of his bright green robes. “I’m so sorry…we’re trying to make this as easy as possible, but I guess we’re really making it worse…”

He trailed off, his heart impossibly heavy. He looked back at his sister-in-law as she reached out; when he approached her side again, she grasped his hand gently in hers.

“No. No, Scorpius. You’re a brilliant healer. You’re so good at all your spells and you’re kind and funny and I’m glad you’re here.”

He sniffed. “Really?”

She nodded. Her smile was tight, but he could tell she meant it. “Really. Could I just have…maybe…a half-hour of silence? You two don’t have to leave the room completely if you don’t want to, but I need a break from the constant questions and such.”

Scorpius jumped at the chance to help her. “Yes! Of course! We’ll give you space for as long as you need! I’ll take Albus down to the café so we can all have a break. How’s that? Does that help?” He stared into his sister-in-law’s eyes, and at once, he felt the most extreme rush of affection. It climbed up his throat. He felt his throat narrow. “I love you. You’re my family. You’re my family and I love you.”

She squeezed his hand gently. “I love you, too. Oh, don’t make me cry this early into it…”

“Okay, okay, sorry, I won’t,” he promised. He struggled to keep back his own tears and then he headed towards the door. He found Evvie and Albus just outside the room, still locked in a fierce argument.

“It’s _my_ daughter and Nora is _my_ brother’s wife and I don’t even know why _you’re_ here and—”

“Albus,” Scorpius quickly hissed. Albus broke off mid-insult. Scorpius walked over and took his hand. “Let’s go down to the café.”

Albus furrowed his brow. “What?! But our daughter! Our baby, Scorpius!”

“She’s not ready to come out yet. We’re driving Nora a bit mad.”

Evvie cleared her throat. “See? I told you, Albus.”

“I…and you…and chocolate…and…!” Albus groaned, annoyed. “ _Fine_. But if I miss our daughter’s birth, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, _ever_ recover!”

And with that, Scorpius’s husband broke their joined hands and stalked down the corridor towards the lifts. Scorpius glanced a bit sheepishly at Evvie.

“He’s, er, very…Albus-y,” Scorpius defended.

“That’s certainly a way to put it.”

Scorpius couldn’t stop himself from grinning. Thankfully, Evvie mirrored it.

“Will you ask Victoire to send me a Patronus if something goes wrong?” Scorpius asked.

She nodded. “I will. Don’t worry. Go have your tea or coffee or whatever.”

Scorpius caught up with Albus at the lifts. They stepped in together. After watching Albus pace back and forth frantically, Scorpius reached out and pulled him to his side. Albus threw his arms around him at once and sighed heavily into his shoulder.

“I’m so nervous,” Albus admitted thickly. Scorpius could feel the irregular _thump-thumpthump-thumpthumpthump_ of his heart against his own chest.  He rubbed his hand down Albus’s back and pressed a kiss to his insanely untidy hair. He felt his love for his husband wind its way around his heart in an overwhelming vice grip. For a moment, all he could think about was Albus: how to make Albus happier, how to make his heart stop beating strangely, how to make him more comfortable.

“Scorpius, what if something happens?” asked Albus.

“It won’t,” Scorpius said at once. He’d meant to sound more reassuring, but inside, he was suffering from extreme anxiety as well, and the squeaking quality of his tone reflected that. He was so afraid that something would go wrong. So afraid that they would lose their daughter before they even held her. So afraid that he’d never get to hear her cry, never get to see her eyes open, never get to kiss her little hand…

His eyes were burning as they pulled apart and stepped off the lift. The café was less crowded than he’d expected. They chose a table near the back. Scorpius immediately sank down into the nearest seat, feeling a bit weak as his mind continued to consider all the ways this day could turn towards tragedy. He fidgeted nervously with the hem of his robes; his husband seemed to realize he was in no state to move.

“I’ll order,” Albus offered. Scorpius bowed his head and ran his hands nervously through his hair as he waited on Albus and their food. He was pulled from his thoughts by a soft, feminine voice.

“Scorpius?”

He looked up at once and blinked, surprised. His dad’s girlfriend gave him a hesitant smile.

“Gemma, hi. Hello. Hi. Is Dad here with you? I thought he went back to the flat to do some last minute tidying? I can’t _believe_ Albus and I left without even folding the laundry; we can’t take Lyra home to a _messy house_!” More anxiety. Scorpius thought he might explode. The anxiety kept doing this—hitting him all at once in strong, all-consuming waves.

“Gemma!! Excellent!” Albus greeted, before she could respond to Scorpius. He pulled the third chair at their table out for Gemma and then sat down in his. He set the scones he’d purchased down in the center and then turned to face Gemma. “I’d like you to do something about your niece. Preferably remind her that there are no Head Girls in hospitals and she can’t just boss me around like I’m a third year who forgot to tuck his bloody shirt in.”

“It’d be wasted breath, Albus, but I’ll try for you,” she said in mock-seriousness. Albus nodded, pleased. Gemma turned to face Scorpius. She reached over the table and patted Scorpius’s hand; it was such a motherly gesture that he felt the backs of his eyes burn, but he clenched his fists and fought the emotion back just in time. Gemma let her hand slip off his at once, clearly reading his suddenly-tense posture as a sign that he didn’t want to be touched. He parted his lips to explain himself—to explain that it wasn’t that he didn’t want her to act motherly towards him, it was just that he was afraid somehow that allowing her to do so would jinx it, that he would lose her, too—but he couldn’t figure out how to say those things without it being awkward, so he nervously shifted in his seat and pretended nothing had happened. Thankfully, Gemma did the same.

“Your dad has everything tidied. We brought Hoppy over from Malfoy Manor and had her sanitize all the bathrooms and kitchens, press all the curtains, steam the carpets, and reorganize all of Lyra’s toys,” Gemma said.

Scorpius beamed.

“I’ve stocked all the necessary baby potions, salves, and creams in Lyra’s nursery, too," Gemma continued. “Everything looks brilliant. Your dad is upstairs in the waiting area with Albus’s parents.”

“‘Albus’s parents’,” Albus repeated gleefully. Scorpius guessed Gemma was probably the only person in Albus’s entire life who’d ever referred to Harry and Ginny Potter as “Albus’s parents”. Albus peered happily at Gemma. “Can’t Draco just marry you already? I’ve already got a tux and everything.”

Gemma’s cheeks went a bit pink. “You’ll have to talk to Draco about that, Albus.”

“Oh, trust me. I will,” Albus swore.

Scorpius picked nervously at his scones, not the least bit interested in eating. Albus only managed to eat two, so he must’ve been feeling similarly anxious. Scorpius’s dad joined them only a few minutes in. He sat between Gemma and Scorpius, and he didn’t force conversation, but he set a calm, steady hand on Scorpius’s shoulder. Scorpius pulled so much reassurance from that one touch that he felt as if a genuine weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

They all picked at the scones and didn’t say much, but somehow, just being together helped immensely. His dad didn’t say _‘it’s going to be just fine’_ , but Scorpius heard the words anyway.

“It’s so _bloody nice_ to be around only Slytherins for once,” Albus blurted.

Scorpius and his dad gave nearly identical laughs, and by the time they headed back upstairs, Scorpius’s anxiety was making more room for his excitement.

* * *

 

Things hadn’t progressed much at all by the time they returned to Nora’s room. Scorpius examined the floating image of Lyra above Nora’s stomach and nervously twisted his fingers together. Both Nora and Lyra still seemed to be in perfect health, but he didn’t like how long this was taking. He knew it was normal for it to, but every minute that Nora was uncomfortable or in pain felt like a stab to Scorpius’s heart.

“Can I do anything?” he pleaded. “More labor potion? Coffee?”

“Better pillows?” Albus suggested.

“What is it with you and her pillows? The pillows are _fine_ ,” Evvie muttered from the corner.

Nora took Scorpius’s offered hand. “No, I’m fine. Honestly. The labor potion has made the pain nearly nonexistent. It’s okay.”

“I feel bad. I just want this over for you,” Scorpius admitted. He felt Albus step up behind him. His husband’s hand settled on his lower back. He leaned back into his touch and felt the backs of his eyes burn.

“It’ll be over before you know it,” she reassured him. And then: “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right. Lyra will be fine.”

“And you’ll be fine?” Albus asked.

“Absolutely! I’m great at this, Albus,” she said. Her voice was bursting with bravery, but Scorpius thought he might’ve sensed a bit of uncertainty beneath her words.

Scorpius and Albus both did their very best to be less annoying. They gave Nora some space, let Victoire take over the healing duties without Scorpius butting in nervously, and occupied their anxious minds with a half-hearted game of chess. The labor was still progressing far too slowly for anybody’s liking when Ginny appeared. She stuck her head through the doorway and surveyed the room, her excited expression gradually falling as if she’d expected to walk in on childbirth.

“I’m not pestering, I just want to know how it’s going,” she greeted. “I feel like we've been in that waiting area since our own births.”

“Gin,” Scorpius heard Harry hiss. He sounded to be a few steps back from Ginny. “We’re meant to be giving her space!”

“It’s fine, it’s all right,” Nora reassured them both.

Harry stepped into the doorway beside Ginny. His green eyes seemed nearly as anxiety-filled as Albus’s (only with far more little lines at the corners).

“How are you feeling?” Harry asked Nora. He and Ginny stepped into the room fully. Harry sat at his daughter-in-law’s bedside.

“Fine,” she promised. “Not nearly as bad as it was with Finnigan.”

“Eugh, yeah,” Harry recalled. He stared off into the distance, his face twisting into a grimace as he seemed to recall the day Finnigan was born. They had _all_ heard Nora’s cries of pain from the waiting room. “He was really insistent on coming out upside down, wasn’t he?”

“He _was_. Ugh…still—better than the circumstances of Henry’s birth, I guess…”

While Nora and Harry reminisced on the Potter (and Potter-Malfoy) camping trip that had turned into an impromptu birth, Scorpius looked towards his approaching mother-in-law. Ginny sank down into the seat beside Albus and Albus reached for his mum at once, his anxiety clearly making him clingier than usual. The sight made Scorpius’s heart feel heavy, but he didn’t know if that was because he hated seeing his husband so nervous, or if it was because it made him miss his own mum. He watched Ginny reassure Albus for a few moments, and then his mother-in-law stood, walked over, sat in the open chair to Scorpius’s left, and wrapped her arms around him. Scorpius let himself relax into her embrace. He breathed in the comforting smell of the Den.

“It’s always very frightening,” Ginny told him quietly. “For everybody. Every single time. But soon it will be over and your daughter will be _here_ and it’ll all have been worth it.”

Scorpius was comforted by the surety in her tone. He glanced over at his husband. They met eyes. The smile they shared a moment later was still a bit strained, but at least Scorpius felt they were far from hyperventilating.

“I didn’t think it’d be this frightening,” he admitted to his mother-in-law. He pulled back, parting their embrace, and frowned. “I was telling Albus earlier that it really took me by surprise how nervous I am because I’m around childbirth all the time and I even helped birth Henry! But this is so different and _terrifying._ ”

Ginny smiled softly. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that’s basically what parenting is: worrying obsessively about things you never gave a second thought to before. Just wait. Tomorrow you’ll be fretting that her socks are cutting off her circulation or something. It’s actually a bit surprising how proactive and creative new parents’ worries are…”

Harry laughed. “You’d know all about that, Gin.” He looked at Albus and Scorpius. “Ginny made us leave every single light on for the first month after we brought James home. All night long. Every. Room.”

Ginny narrowed her eyes at Harry. “I was worried about cot death, Harry! I needed to be able to see James immediately when I opened my eyes—I didn’t want to have to find my wand!”

“Even at night, Mum?” Albus demanded. He snickered. But after a long moment, his snicker pandered off. He furrowed his brow. “Wait—why were you worried about cot death? I thought that only happened to Muggle babies? Mum? Can that happen to magical babies? Nobody told me that. Scorpius, you never told me that!!”

Scorpius shook his head quickly. He reached over and rubbed Albus’s thigh comfortingly. “No, Albus, that doesn’t happen to magical babies.”

Albus looked at his mum. “Then why—”

Ginny threw her hands up in the air. “I was young, paranoid, and overwrought, all right?!”

“Merlin, okay!” Albus said. “Sorry I asked!”

“Just prepare yourselves,” Harry warned them. “Parenting is a bumpy ride. But then again…we had Lulu, so our difficulty level was probably maxed out…might not be quite as bad for you two.”

Albus appeared distressed. “Unless Lyra is a lot like Lu.”

“…I didn’t consider that, to be honest. Well…I mean, you can probably handle anything, Al,” Harry said with a nervous-sounding laugh. That was _not_ reassuring.

“Speaking of Lily,” Scorpius said, her absence suddenly brought to the forefront of his mind, “have you heard anything from her yet? Her flight should’ve landed already, right?”

Scorpius glanced at his wristwatch. He still felt a bit wounded when he thought about his sister-in-law, because he felt she cared more about her airplane vouchers than seeing the baby she’d help bring into the world, but he still wanted her there despite. He had never imagined this moment without her.

“Yeah, the plane landed. They’re on their way now,” Ginny reassured him. She looked at her watch, too. “She may be here already, actually.”

“She ought to go have a nap before coming here,” Nora piped up. “I think I’ve got a while to go until the baby is born. I’d hate for her and Caden to spend ages here after already spending ages on the plane.”

“That’s a good point,” Harry said. “I might borrow Hugo’s mobile and try to ring her…”

Harry didn’t even make it to the doorway. A few seconds later, shouts flooded down the corridor from the waiting area. Scorpius heard Hermione shriek, Ron swear loudly, and Teddy shout: _MERLIN’S WRINKLY BOLLOCKS!_ There was only one person that could’ve caused that range of reaction. Scorpius looked back at his mother-in-law. She was already kneading over her temples.

“Well. Sounds like she’s arrived. _What now_ , honestly…I swear if I walk out there and she’s tattooed her beautiful face…c’mon, Harry, I might need you to hold me back from committing murder…” murmuring darkly, Ginny rose, grabbed Harry’s hand, and headed towards the waiting area to greet her daughter.

Scorpius exchanged a look with Albus. He was already groaning.

“Why can’t she just be normal for _one day_? Just _one_ …” Albus complained.

Scorpius could hear the commotion growing. His curiosity was getting the best of him and he could tell Albus felt the same way. His husband sighed.

“Fine, let’s go see what aggravating thing she’s done _this time_ …Nora, do you mind?”

Scorpius hurried to reassure Nora. “I promise it won’t be long, we’re only going to say hello and then we’ll return and—”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Nora promised him. “I’m not alone. It’s really okay. Go, go! Really. _Really_.”

Sensing that she probably wanted him to leave her alone again, Albus and Scorpius relented. They rose to their feet. Albus took Scorpius’s hand in his and rubbed the back of his hand as they walked. The corridor was alive with loud conversation drifting all the way from the waiting area. Albus made it to the doorway first. Scorpius assumed Lily _had_ tattooed her entire face when Albus stopped dead in his tracks—so completely that he nearly lost balance—and blurted: “BLOODY HELL!”

“ _Albus_!” Albus’s Gran scolded. “Language!”

“I—okay, sorry, Gran, but…what the f—what?!”

Scorpius hurried to his husband’s side. He peeked into the small waiting area. Something had clearly shaken everybody: Ron was gaping, Hermione had her hand pressed over her mouth, Teddy looked close to tears, Roxanne and Dominique were having a rapid whispered conversation, and Harry and Ginny were grouped in front of Lily, nearly blocking her from Scorpius’s view. Scorpius couldn’t see much of Lily, but going by the way Hugo was hugging Caden—with so much emotion that you’d think one of them had just come back from the dead—he was certain that something horrifying had happened. Had their plane crashed?! Were they horrifically injured?! He jumped up onto his tiptoes, trying to see around all the people grouping around his sister-in-law, growing more and more nervous with every second that passed. Albus wasn’t as patient as Scorpius. He shoved family members out of his way; Scorpius scampered through the path his husband made. When Scorpius _finally_ saw his sister—standing there suddenly and _hugely_ pregnant, looking so tired that she could hardly remain upright—he actually let out an audible shriek.

“What the f--  _hell_?! What the _hell_ , Lily?!” Albus exploded.

Ginny was staring at her daughter’s stomach with the most baffled and horrified expression on her face that Scorpius had ever seen her wear. Harry had a hand clapped over his mouth. Neither of them seemed capable of moving. Albus shoved between them.

“Not _funny_ , Lily!” he scolded. He stepped up and glared down at his little sister. “You just can’t stand when things aren’t about you, can you?! You’ve got to find a way to make _my daughter’s_ birth about _you_?! Well I’m not falling for your fake belly! Your prank isn’t funny! There is an actual pregnant woman here and you should be _ashamed_!”

“Albus—”

Albus didn’t let Caden finish. “Oh, I don’t even want to hear it! You let her do this! I thought we were becoming mates! But clearly you’ll never have the guts to stand up to my psychotic sister—this doesn’t even look real, Lily, it’s far too round and—”

It all happened in the blink of an eye. Albus reached out and aggressively slapped his hands down onto her stomach, hard enough that Scorpius winced, Hermione gasped, and Caden stepped up to Albus, his fists balled at his side. Albus’s intention had clearly been to pull the fake belly off of her, but he never got the chance: Lily reacted instantly by kneeing him so hard in the gut that he doubled over with a horrid groan.

“Lily!” Scorpius yelped, horrified. He kneeled down beside his groaning husband and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“It’s not fake, you _fucking prick_!” Lily yelled. She stepped up to Albus, her eyes narrowed and her fists balled. Even in her shock, Ginny reacted (probably by instinct); she stepped up and threw an arm between Lily and Albus, stopping Lily’s progression forward. Not that Albus was in any state to fight back; he was still bent over at the waist and short of breath. But that didn’t stop Lily from pointing at him threateningly. “The next time you touch my stomach like that, it’ll be your bollocks I kick!”

Still groaning, Albus leaned into Scorpius for support. Scorpius carefully helped him back into a standing position. Confusion swept over the entire room. Scorpius looked uncertainly at Harry and Ginny, waiting for them to take the lead on how to handle this. He was torn between disbelief and chagrin…the fact that she was _pregnant_ was strange enough without realizing that his husband had just effectively smacked their unborn niece or nephew.  

“I…but…” Harry said.

Ginny had broken through _her_ stunned silence. “Lily…Luna…POTTER!” she shrieked. Lily jumped. Caden stepped closer to her, his eyes widened a bit nervously as Ginny walked up to them. She was _seething_. “You’ve got to be _kidding me_! You’re about to pop and you didn’t even tell your _bloody mum_ that you’re having a _bloody baby_?! Lulu, I swear, if you weren’t pregnant, I would _throttle you_!”

“Ginny,” Hermione called, “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to—”

“Shut it!” Harry and Ginny chorused.

“OI, don’t tell her to ‘shut it!” Ron defended.

“SHUT IT,” the Potter parents repeated, this time to Ron. They turned back to face their daughter.

“Lulu, what?! _What_?!” Harry demanded, horrified.

“You have so much explaining to do! _Both of you_! Caden Rowle! Caden—what the _bloody hell_ is your middle name?!” exploded Ginny.

“Er…Anselm…” Caden said hesitantly.

“CADEN BLOODY ANSELM BLOODY ROWLE!”

Much to Scorpius’s surprise, Caden flinched back from her, like he thought she might strike him in her rage. Lily didn’t miss it.  

“It’s not our fault! Don’t you dare yell at Caden!” Lily said at once, furious. Then she pointed right at Scorpius. “It’s _his fault_!”

“What?! How can you possibly blame this on my husband?!” Albus yelled angrily. He straightened and glowered fully at his sister.

“Me?! What did I do?!” Scorpius asked. “I’m pretty sure I was not involved in you getting pregnant!”

“Your potions!! I am _super fucking fertile_ , Scorpius! I did _everything you said_ and _look_!” she gestured at her stomach.

He gaped. His heart sank to his toes. “What?! No, I gave you the strongest contraceptive potion invented, you must’ve not been taking it correctly—” Lily’s eye twitched. Scorpius backtracked at once. “Or you were. Oh no. Oh no!! I poisoned you! Oh no!”

“You did! You did poison me!”

“So _this_ is why you couldn’t take a portkey!” Fred blurted out happily. “Oooh! _Damn_ , Roxanne, why didn’t either of us think of this? We could’ve started a bet…”

“You two are in _so much trouble_ ,” growled Ginny, her eyes back on the expectant parents. Lily’s face was turning bright red. She stamped her foot, frustrated.

“Mum! What the fuck! Nora got pregnant by accident before she was even eighteen and you didn’t yell at her and James! And she didn’t even have an excuse! I was being responsible! I did every single thing I was supposed to do! You aren’t allowed to be angry with us; it wasn’t our fault, damn it! Dad!”

Ginny exploded before Harry could get a word in.

“I’M NOT ANGRY THAT YOU’RE PREGNANT, I’M ANGRY THAT YOU SOMEHOW KEPT THIS HIDDEN FROM ME FOR…FOR…” Ginny trailed off. Still red in the face, she turned her eyes back to Lily’s stomach. “…Wait. Wait. How far along are you?! You look well into your third trimester, but that wouldn’t…and you weren’t…because…but…”

“Lily,” Harry said suddenly, his voice genuinely injured. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Everybody fell silent. Scorpius looked away awkwardly. He busied himself with pulling Albus’s shirt up and inspecting his abdomen to make sure Lily hadn’t bruised him. The skin around his bellybutton was slightly red, but Scorpius thought it was unlikely that it’d get much worse than that. He gently rubbed his thumb over the sore spot with a frown while Lily finally answered her dad.

“Daddy, I didn’t want you to be upset,” Lily admitted. She sounded like a little girl.

“Upset? Why would I be _upset_?” Harry asked, confused. “Upset that you’re having a baby? Why?” He sounded horrified when he spoke next. “Did you think that I would…yell at you? Did you feel like you couldn’t talk to me?”

“I dunno. I just…I didn’t want you to think…” she broke off, her voice a bit thick. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I didn’t want you both to tell me that I can’t do it. Because I want to. And realizing that was confusing enough on its own without everybody confronting me and making me explain myself loads of times. I didn’t want to have to defend my decision…I didn’t want you lot to think I’m weak or silly or that my mind is easily changed. It’s all been so…personal. The most personal thing that has ever happened to me in every way and I didn’t want to talk about it—not in the way you lot would’ve expected me to—and I just wanted to keep it _mine_ — _ours_ , mine and Caden’s, really—until I felt ready and I was worried that…ugh!” Lily appeared so frustrated that she was nearing tears. She glanced up at Caden.

“She was worried about how this would change the way you see her,” he provided on her behalf.

Lily’s shoulders relaxed with relief. She looked back at her dad. “Right. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. And I don’t want you to think lesser of me, Dad. I’m still me—I’m still your Lulu. And I will always be her, even when I’m a mum…that was my big epiphany, that’s essentially what you missed.”

“Oh, Lulu,” Harry said. His voice was a bit unsteady. Scorpius kept prodding at Albus’s stomach even when he knew he was fine, just to keep himself busy in the awkward situation. “I would never tell you that you couldn’t do it. I would never think lesser of you for this. I can’t believe you thought that.”

“I think _I_ thought that before. That it would make me lesser to have kids. So I guess I just assumed that that’s what _everybody_ thought. And I didn’t want to risk you thinking that…because I didn’t want to let you down,” Lily admitted.

Ginny interrupted. “Okay, I get that this is a moment, and I also want to say that I would never think lesser of you for this, but _what the hell is going on?!_ You were _not_ pregnant when you left, Lily!”

“Nah, I wasn’t,” Lily reassured Ginny.

Silence.

“So…what the hell is going on?! How far along are you?! I don’t understand, Lily, and you need to explain."

Lily took a deep breath. “ _Well_ …I…” she changed her mind at the last moment and fell silent. Caden stepped in.

“She’s twenty-one weeks,” he provided.

Ginny gave him a skeptical look. _“Twenty-one_ weeks? With her first pregnancy? No. That can’t be right. What healer has she seen? They told you two incorrectly.”

“It is correct. She just looks like she’s further along because we’re having twins,” Caden finally said.

For somebody expecting twin babies, he seemed remarkably calm. A gasp traveled through the room. Scorpius felt a shock race down his spine. _Twins_. He thought at once to the twins he kept seeing in his dreams. He stood and looked at Albus. Albus was already looking at him, an open expression of shock in place. He must’ve remembered, too.

“ _Twins?!_ ” Harry breathed, incredulous.

“Wait…wait…hang on! Hang _on_! _Twins_?! Two?! Two babies?! Wait!” Ginny seemed unable to process that.

“Yep. A boy and a girl,” Lily said proudly. She dropped a hand to the top of her stomach. “They don’t even look like aliens anymore, either.”

“I—but—I…did _you already know about this, Hugo_?!” Ginny demanded, turning her gaze to Hugo. He was the only one who didn’t look surprised.

“Er…” Hugo backed away from his aunt slowly. He kept his eyes on her as he reversed until he’d fallen back into Hermione’s opened and protective arms. “Maybe. Aster and I knew.”

Ginny spun back around to face Lily. “Twins! Surprise twins! And you didn’t even tell your own mum! Lily! I don’t even know what to say! I thought you didn’t want kids! I don’t—I don’t understand…”

Scorpius realized his mother-in-law was extremely overwhelmed when her eyes filled with tears. Harry seemed equally choked with emotion. He had reached out and taken Lily’s hands in his. He held his daughter’s hands tightly.

“ _Twins_?” he repeated.

Lily nodded once. Both their eyes seemed to sparkle with tears from behind their glasses lenses. “Yes. I can show you if Scorpius will do a scan sometime before we leave. And before you lot even think it— _no_ , Caden did _not_ pressure me into this. _I_ decided to do this. It was what _I wanted._ We talked about it—a lot, Mum and Dad, _so much talking—_ and we thought about it and we realized that we can make this work in a way that suits our life together. And this hasn’t been the easiest thing so far and I’m sure it’ll only get harder but…it’s what I chose. It's my choice. And I will be _so angry_ if you blame my boyfriend _,_ and anyway, it’s really poor form to insult your grandbabies’ father. They’ll hear you. They will. They can hear music now, the healer said. So don’t scream at their dad.”  

“That was so…moving, Lily,” Caden said, a hand pressed over his heart. He laughed as Lily elbowed him hard in response.

“Okay, okay, I won’t yell at him, and I shouldn’t have before—I’m sorry, Caden, I know you probably told her not to keep it a secret—”

Caden interrupted Ginny. “I did. Multiple times. Daily.”

“Right…sorry. Wasn’t really thinking clearly, to be honest. So this…Lily, you’re happy about this?” Ginny asked. She reached out hesitantly and set her palms on Lily’s stomach; Lily grimaced, but she didn’t pull away or knee her mum in the gut.

“I’m happy about the ‘having a family with him’ part. Not loving the pregnancy part, but I’m already halfway done, so I’ll live…hopefully,” Lily responded.

Ginny grew a bit misty-eyed as she slid her hands down her daughter’s pregnant belly. “ _Merlin_ , Lily. You just can’t let us go a year without shocking us to death, can you?”

“Nope,” Lily shrugged.

“Mind you,” Ginny continued. “I prefer this surprise over the ones where you come home burnt to a crisp. Don’t you, Harry?”

“What?” he breathed. He still appeared dazed. He was staring at Ginny’s hands on Lily’s stomach as if the sight were so foreign that he couldn’t possibly hope to comprehend it. He looked over at Caden. “…Twins?”

For the first time, Caden smiled. It was so bright that Scorpius caught himself appreciating just how handsome he really was.

“Yeah. We were shocked, too.” There was a short pause. Caden turned to face Harry fully. “Lily wants to name the girl Iris.”

Harry laughed suddenly. It was happy and wavering with emotion. “Iris! Weird, but very Lily…I love that.”

“Me too,” Caden smiled.

The Potter parents exchanged a look, and without having to say a word, they both turned and threw their arms around their daughter at once.

“Oh,” Lily said happily. She patted her parents’ backs. “That’s a much nicer reaction. Al, take note.”

“I was _taken off guard_ , Lily!” Albus defended himself. Scorpius could hear a bit of guilt in his tone, though.  

“We still have a _lot_ to talk about,” Ginny told her sternly. “But you’re _beautiful_ , Lulu, you know that? Radiant as the sun, my clever, strong girl. My _baby_. My baby is having _babies_! I don’t know what to feel.”

“Gross, Mum, please stop,” Lily said, horrified. Ginny stepped back from Lily and seized Caden in a tight hug, all semblance of anger forgotten.

“Oh, I bet you two made such beautiful and clever babies,” Ginny said warmly. Caden patted Ginny’s back.

“Well, I’m sure I did my best,” he said. Lily snickered.

Harry had clearly decided what to feel: glee. “Two grandbabies. Two entire grandbabies all at once!” he stepped back and set his palm on her stomach. Again, Lily seemed to choose to deal with it. “Two babies in here! Gin, that makes _three grandchildren in one year!_ Three!! No, _four_ , if Nora and James still end up adopting Rory’s birth sibling! _Four babies_!”

“Damn…Harry, we’re going to have to expand the Den again!” Ginny realized. “If Lily’s moving back home _plus_ Caden _plus_ the twins—that’s at least two additional rooms but the twins might want to have their own spaces once they’re older so we’ll have to do three to be safe—”

“Er, what? No. Stop. Back up, Mum. We’re not moving in with you two. We’re not moving back at all. We’re building a house just outside of my sanctuary,” Lily warned them quickly.

“ _What_?!” Harry and Ginny exclaimed, horrified.

“Wait, what do you _mean_ you’re not moving back?!” Ginny asked.

“I mean we’re staying in New Zealand. We’re living there, as a family.”

“What the _bloody f—_ ”

“ _GINNY!”_ Molly shrieked.

“— _Okay,_ Mum! Lily, you can’t raise your twins alone in New Zealand!” insisted Ginny.

“I’m not alone, Mum. I’ve got this bloke and he’s fairly competent.”

“‘This bloke’ thanks you,” said Caden dryly.

Harry gave it a spin. “Lily, think about this. Your first time as a parent, with  _twins_ , no less. Why would you want to be on the opposite side of the planet from your family?”

“Why would I want to quit my job? I’m not quitting my job. I’m just going to make that very clear. I’m _not_.”

“Well,” Molly interrupted, her voice tense, “you two _are_ going to get married before the babies are born, right? Arthur, wake up, come here and tell them they need to get married before the babies are born...”

Scorpius thought that this was probably a good place to abandon the conversation. He backed up and took Albus’s hand right as the Potter parents began arguing with Lily about New Zealand and Molly began harassing Caden about marriage.

“Let’s go check in on Nora,” Scorpius suggested.

“Good idea,” Albus said quickly. He eyed his mum. “Mum looks like she might cry, and if she cries, I’ll cry, so we’ve got to go.”

They were heading back down the corridor when they heard Ron break through the arguments with a cheeky comment about the benefits of waiting to get married (his main one being that the twin babies could be in the wedding). After he’d broken through the tense words being thrown back and forth, he made a comment to Lily about her not being _that_ big ( _“I could still lift you up, my favorite Potter,”_ he boasted) followed quickly by Lily’s shrieking laughter and cry of _“Uncle Ron!!!”_ as he presumably made good on that boast and actually  _did_ lift her.

Content that their pregnant sister wouldn’t be murdered any time soon, Scorpius and Albus returned to the hospital room. Albus burst in, Scorpius on his heels. Nora seemed to have enjoyed the alone-time; she and her friends were watching something on one of Evvie’s muggle devices and Nora was laughing between contractions.

“What’s going on out there?” Clementine asked at once. “All the yelling…? Louis is all right, right? I told him he shouldn’t go by Rita’s house without somebody with him…”

“Lily is _pregnant_!” Albus blurted at once. “Pregnant! My little sister! She’s huge! Like _this_!” Albus brought his hand out a bit further than Lily’s stomach actually went, but Scorpius gave him a bit of leeway; it was difficult to remember precise distances. “With twins!! She’s having _twins_!!”

Nora sat straight up.

“What?! Albus, are you _serious_?!”

“Yes! I’m bloody _serious_! Lily is going to have two babies!”

“Oh _Merlin_!” Nora said. And then, she turned and pushed the blanket from her legs, climbing right out of the bed. “I’ve got to see her!!”

“Er, Nora, I don’t think you should…” Albus trailed off nervously.

“Nora, no, he’s right, we’ll bring Lily to you _,_ you shouldn’t be—”

Scorpius’s fretting was interrupted by his sister-in-law. “Scorpius, do you remember the circumstances of Henry’s birth?”

He did. They’d been on a Potter family camping trip. When Nora started getting contractions (a month earlier than she should have), they’d begun the hike back towards the closest wizarding village so they could Floo her to St. Mungo’s (apparation wasn’t safe during pregnancy). She had effectively been hiking up until the moment she fell to the ground and proclaimed that she would have to have her son _right there_. James had used magic to put the tent back up within seconds, Scorpius had found himself with no choice but to deliver a baby for only the second time in his life right in the middle of a forest, and with only a few pushes, Henry was in his hands, perfectly healthy despite his early birth.

“Walking didn’t hurt Henry or me,” Nora reminded Scorpius, and with that, she walked from the room quickly, probably hoping to make it down the corridor before another contraction hit.

“I hope that wasn’t a day-late April Fool’s prank, Albus,” Evvie said. “You’ll break her heart. She’s been worried for weeks that Lyra won’t have any friends her age.”

Scorpius gasped. “We’ve been worried about that, too! Albus and I! She should’ve told us, we could’ve all been worried together…”

“It’s not a prank! Though I thought that at first, too,” Albus admitted. He shook his head. “James is going to _lose it_.”

“Albus,” Scorpius said, his mind still on Lyra and her future social life. “Albus, do you know what this means?”

He furrowed his brow. “Lyra will have two aggravating cousins?”

“No…Albus, she’ll have friends, friends who will be in her year at Hogwarts. Even if they’re the only three, at least Harry isn’t teaching only Lyra in his DADA class!”

Albus grinned. “Right! _Right_. Merlin, Scorpius, you’re right!!”

The more he thought about it, the more overjoyed he became, until he said: “I have to go hug my sister.”

“That’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Scorpius admitted to Evvie and Clem.

“So Lily’s _keeping_ the babies?” Clementine asked skeptically. “I thought she didn’t want kids.”

Scorpius glanced at Clem. “She’s Lily. There’s really no telling what she’ll do on any given day.”

He thought about those twins from his dreams again. He couldn’t remember any solid images of them, but he just knew instinctively that it had been _them_. Would he and Albus go on holidays with Caden and Lily? Would their families be close like Teddy and Vic and James and Nora were? Would they get to embark on parenting together? The idea made Scorpius extremely overjoyed. He hoped that his dreams were true, that there was a future where his family, Lily’s, and James’s went fruit-picking together in France, a future where all their kids could grow together and have such a wonderful built-in support system. He wanted to hug Lily, too. But before he could head after Nora and Albus, they returned, this time with Nora leaning into Albus’s side. They looked a bit shaken.

“What?!” Scorpius said at once, his heart sinking to his toes. He walked over and helped Nora to the bed immediately. “Is everything okay?!”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she reassured him. Her voice was small. “It’s just…Molly…she started crying when she hugged Lily. She was crying really hard. I’ve never seen her like that.”

Scorpius was confused. He looked at Albus. “Your gran? Why? What’s wrong? Is she just really happy?”

Albus walked up to Scorpius’s side and lowered his voice. “My gran had twin sons, remember? It was Uncle George’s birthday yesterday…and also my uncle Fred’s. I think it was a bit…much for Gran. To learn that Lily’s having twins the day after Fred’s birthday. A bit close to home, I guess…”

Albus trailed off. Scorpius knew it was just as difficult for him to see his gran crying as his mum. Scorpius had always felt the same way about his own mum, too. It hurt so terribly to see your parents in pain. Scorpius knew all about that.

* * *

 

It took another hour or so for Nora to reach active labor, but once she was at that point, it all seemed to speed up significantly. It seemed like one moment she was laughing on the bed with her friends and the next she was in pain so intense the labor potion couldn’t touch it. Albus had to leave the room after only a few pained groans; it was affecting him more than Scorpius had anticipated. So when it was nearly time, Scorpius scampered out into the corridor on weak legs to find his husband.

Thankfully, he hadn’t gone far. He was sitting in an uncomfortable looking chair right outside the door, his head bowed and his face in his hands. He barely seemed to be breathing. Scorpius hurried over to his nearly comatose husband. He kneeled in front of him. He leaned over and kissed the top of his knee; Albus hardly seemed to register it. 

“Al,” Scorpius said gently.

Albus looked up at him, dazed. “Scorpius. We’re going to be dads.”

Scorpius felt a strange mixture of joy and terror. He gave a shaky laugh. “Yes. We _are_! Al?”

Albus covered his mouth with his hand. His green eyes swelled with tears. “Oh, Merlin. We’re about to have a _baby_.”

“I…yes. Yeah, we are. And I’m so excited. I’m so nervous and so excited,” Scorpius agreed. He guessed all of this had just become really _real_ for his husband. It was about to become even more real. He kissed his knee again and rubbed his thigh reassuringly. “Listen. It’s nearly time.”

Albus reached out towards Scorpius’s hands. They locked their fingers together. Albus grip was tight and his palms a bit damp. “Time for the birth? Right now? Right this second? Are you sure?”

Scorpius nodded. “Victoire is getting everything set up.” He watched Albus take a few tense breaths. Fear prickled the back of his neck. “Unless…unless you’re not up for it. You don’t have to be in the room if you’re not.”

Scorpius did not want to go in there alone. He didn’t want to meet their daughter for the first time without Albus by his side. He didn’t want to experience that moment without Albus there to share it. He didn’t want to do it alone. But Albus seemed more frightened than Scorpius had _ever_ seen him—and he had seen him in some truly frightening situations. He wouldn’t make him go back into the room if he couldn’t handle it.

“I’m going to be in the room…I’m not going to miss it, I’m just…” Albus trailed off. He looked down and met Scorpius’s eyes. Scorpius felt his own heart widen and swell at the concern and apprehension in Albus’s gaze. He stood up slightly and leaned in, taking Albus’s face in his hands. Albus wrapped his arms around Scorpius’s middle as Scorpius brought their lips together. He kissed his husband deeply until he felt his grip relax a bit, and then he pulled back only to continue pressing small, soft kisses to his husband’s mouth over, and over, and over again until Albus laughed. Once he heard that laugh, his own followed, and the heaviness in his chest gave way to something that felt like genuine excitement. He ran his slightly-quivery fingers through his husband’s mad hair.

“Our daughter is almost here,” he realized.

Albus’s eyes grew damp. Scorpius had only realized he was close to tearing up a few seconds before he did. “I already love her. I’m so afraid, Scorpius.”

Scorpius thought about the little baby they’d watched grow for so many months. Losing her was incomprehensible. It couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it. Not only for the sake of his own heart but for Albus’s.

He moved his hands back to Albus’s face. He peered seriously into his eyes. “Don’t be. I’m not going to let anything happen to our daughter.”

He had never seen Albus quite as vulnerable. Ordinarily, it was the opposite. It felt nice to feel like the protector for once.

“Promise?” asked Albus.

“I swear it.”

Albus leaned in this time. Scorpius felt the anxiety squeezing around his heart loosen a bit during their kiss.

“Then I can go back in there,” Albus decided.

Scorpius resisted the urge to jump up and down in joy. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

They walked back in with their arms around each other’s shoulders, leaning into each other for comfort and strength. Nora beamed at them.

“Good, you’re back,” she told them, and the warmth in her voice soothed Scorpius’s soul a bit more, too. All he wanted was to make this easier for her, and if them being in the room did that, he knew he nor Albus were going _anywhere_.

He pulled his healer’s robes on, Albus sat in the seat at Nora’s bedside, Evvie preoccupied herself with continuously re-cooling the cloth on Nora’s damp forehead, and Clementine was obsessively monitoring Nora and Lyra’s heartbeats with more concentration than the mediwitch. Scorpius had always wanted to assist with the birth, but he had worried that the personal nature of the situation would cause him to break down from the stress and be unable to truly focus on the tasks at hand. However, his anxiety seemed to do the opposite. His mind focused in on every medical duty as if it were the most important thing he had ever done. Time passed quickly to him as if somebody had sped it up tenfold. It all went much quicker than Scorpius had anticipated it would. One moment he was tugging nervously at his lime green robes as Victoire instructed Nora to push, and the next, in what seemed like an impossibly sparse amount of time, he was watching his daughter slide right into Victoire’s hands.

It took a moment for the sight to process. He felt as if his heart had actually turned over. Victoire suctioned out the baby’s airways with a gentle swirl of her wand, and at once, strong, loud cries pierced the room. Scorpius couldn’t seem to move. Without pausing to say a word, Victoire turned, passed the baby to Scorpius, and returned to help finish up the birth. Leaving Scorpius standing there stunned, his newborn daughter in his hands.

He was trembling so hard he feared he’d drop her. He struggled to take her in; his mind couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the medically necessary things he knew needed to be done. He looked up as Albus approached them, almost a bit hesitantly. He already had tears clinging to his dark eyelashes. Albus studied their daughter and appeared genuinely speechless, and Scorpius—overwhelmed, his heart pounding—found it easier to look at Albus than the baby. Scorpius shifted their wailing baby, his emotions swelling up within him. He kept those emotions safely at bay as he tended to his daughter, first dealing with the umbilical cord, then quickly cleaning her, then gently placing a hat on her head and wrapping her up in the soft green blanket he'd purchased only a few days after learning that Nora was pregnant. All the while, Albus waited to the side with a huge, all-consuming smile in place, his eyes still filled with tears.

As soon as Healer Potter-Malfoy had done everything he had to do to make sure the baby was healthy (to make sure he’d kept his promise to Albus), Scorpius was able to truly comprehend that this was _his_ baby. He was _Scorpius_ again, and this was Lyra, his and Albus’s daughter. He cradled his daughter close to his heart and walked over towards Albus. His eyes felt hot; he knew tears were imminent. With Lyra cleaned up and tended to, they both finally peered down to take her in. Scorpius could feel her little heart pounding away against his arm. There was something so reverent and moving in their silence; Scorpius felt connected to Albus in ways he couldn’t even voice in that moment as they both studied every inch of their little child. She was a beautiful baby, and that was something Scorpius knew was both subjective _and_ objective. She was beautiful because she was theirs, and she was beautiful because _she was_. Scorpius felt tears climbing up his throat as he leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. And as his lips pressed to his baby’s skin, he felt a rush of love so intense that it floored him for a moment. A rush of love so intense—and so unlike anything he had ever felt before—that it made his eyes burn more incessantly. He realized all at once that Lyra was _his_. This was _his_ little girl, _his_ daughter. And he loved her, he loved her. He had never loved anything like he loved her. He felt so moved by the force of it that he was rendered speechless, and going by the gentle look in Albus’s eyes and his mutual silence, Albus was experiencing something similar in that moment.

Finally, after at least two minutes of them sniffling against oncoming tears and grinning down at their baby like idiots, Albus spoke.

“Merlin’s saggy— is it _red_? Her hair?” he heard Albus demand. Scorpius looked up at his husband; he was holding Lyra’s tiny little hand in his and staring at her like she was some magnificent thing that might disappear at any moment. Scorpius looked up at Lyra’s head; he’d still been in a daze when he put her hat on, so he hadn’t noticed much, but after Albus said that, he realized the little bit of hair peeking out from beneath her hat _did_ look slightly reddish. He eased the pale purple hat back so they could inspect. There was a definite reddish hue, but Scorpius thought it was more in the middle between golden and red. He smiled. It made him think of the Weasleys; he hoped this would make Molly feel a bit more cheerful.

“A bit reddish, yeah,” Scorpius agreed. “Albus…she’s beautiful.”

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Albus said at once, his voice bursting with emotion. He sniffed again. “Can I hold her?” Scorpius heard the restrained longing; he’d probably been dying to ask it since Scorpius had first been handed her. Scorpius hadn’t really been thinking clearly before, but as soon as Albus asked, he felt embarrassed for how long he’d monopolized her. He passed her gently to Albus, and at the sight of them together, his heart felt too large for his chest. His tears finally burst from him as Albus leaned over and gently kissed the tip of Lyra’s nose. His tears burned his slightly-chapped lips (he had forgotten to drink water, hadn’t he? When was the last time he had a glass of water?! Water was important, very important, and Scorpius couldn’t remember having water for…for… _wait, not important, not important right now…focus, Scorpius…)_

“I think she looks a bit like you, even this early,” Albus admitted. He gave a happy, watery laugh. Scorpius reached over and gently stroked Lyra’s cheek with his knuckle. He couldn’t believe how tiny she was, how fragile, how precious. He couldn’t believe that she was _theirs_ , that they—the unlucky Slytherin duo—had been lucky enough to have her.

Albus smiled down at her for a few more moments, his eyes full of stars, and then he turned.

“Nora,” he said, his voice still thick with emotion, as if he’d only just processed that more was happening in the room outside of their brand new daughter. To be fair, Scorpius had, too. “Do you want to hold her? Nora?”

The concern in Albus’s voice made Scorpius turn to face their sister-in-law at once. To his surprise, the curtains had been drawn around the bed. They hadn’t been drawn once before that moment. Scorpius stopped Albus as Albus went to pull them back and bring the baby to Nora.

“No, she might not be done with the birth yet,” he told Albus. He pointed at Victoire’s feet peeking out from the gap between the end of the curtains and the floor. “Vic’s still in there. Nora, are you okay?”

“Yes, don’t worry, I’m fine,” Nora called to them. Scorpius could hear tears brimming in her voice but he wasn’t sure of their cause; his stomach clenched nervously. “How is she? Is she healthy?”

“Yes. Yes, she’s absolutely perfect,” Albus gushed. “Her hair is reddish and she’s so tiny and  _beautiful._ Nora, she’s wonderful, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.”

“She’s in perfect health,” Scorpius added, because he knew that was probably Nora’s main concern, and he had a strange feeling that she wasn’t quite in the mood or mindset for their hysterical gratitude yet.

“I’m glad,” she said, and despite the tremor to her words, Scorpius knew she was genuine in that. There was a pause. “Albus?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you get James? I want to see him and my kids.”

Scorpius exchanged a worried look with Albus. Albus went to pass Lyra back at once, to follow through on Nora’s request, but Clementine stepped out of the curtains before he could.

“No, I’ll go get James. You stay with your baby,” she told Albus. She paused beside them. Scorpius smiled as she gently stroked Lyra’s forehead. “She _is_ beautiful.”

While Clementine left to get James, Scorpius tried to decide whether he should offer Lyra to Nora. He didn’t want to make it worse, but he didn’t know if that’s why she was upset (because she hadn’t seen that the baby was okay with her own eyes.) She had made them promise they _wouldn’t_ give her the baby unless she specifically asked, but he didn’t want her to be upset. This had been one of the things he’d dreaded most the entire pregnancy.

“Do you want to see her?” Albus asked, clearly thinking the same as Scorpius.

Evvie answered for her. Not a good sign. “Not quite yet. Why don’t you two take the baby out and show her off?”

“But we want to make sure Nora’s okay,” Albus persisted. He sounded deeply disturbed by her tears.

“I’m fine, go on,” Nora reassured Albus shakily. “Go on, really.”

Again, Scorpius sensed that she _wanted_ them to leave. But he had a sinking feeling and wouldn’t leave until he knew she was physically all right.

“Victoire, is everything okay?” he asked. He heard the anxiety in his own voice. “Did something go wrong during the birth?”

The curtain fabric rustled right before Victoire parted it. Scorpius peeked in; Nora seemed fine, she was sitting up and drinking water from her favorite coffee mug (she’d brought it with her). There was an empty vial of Blood Replenishing Potion right beside her, but that was typical with a good percentage of births. Victoire walked up and set a reassuring hand on Scorpius’s shoulder. She closed curtains behind her.

“She’s perfectly fine. I wouldn’t lie to you,” Victoire said.

Scorpius was still staring at the space the gap in the curtains had just been. “The blood loss is under control? No hemorrhaging?”

Albus stepped up. “I’ve got two vials of my dittany powder mixture in my coat pocket, it’s just over here, do you need me to—?”

“No, she’s fine! Merlin, everything is _fine_ , I promise,” Victoire said. “No hemorrhaging. She just wants to see her family, that’s all.”

Scorpius and Albus looked at each other. Albus seemed to be asking Scorpius whether or not to believe Victoire. Scorpius nodded; he knew Victoire wouldn’t have lied to him about Nora’s health.

“Okay. Let us know when to come back, okay?” Scorpius requested.

Victoire nodded. She leaned over Lyra afterwards and smiled down at her. “She’s _adorable_ , Al.”

Albus tightened his arms slightly, bringing their daughter closer. “She’s _perfect_ ,” he repeated proudly.

Albus and Scorpius left the room, shooting worried looks over their shoulders every few steps. They paused right outside of the hospital room; they could hear Clementine and Nora begin whispering as soon as they stepped out. 

“Do you think she’s okay?” Albus asked.

Scorpius considered that. “Yeah. And I think she’ll feel better once James and her kids are here.” _I hope_.

Scorpius tripped a few times as they walked down the corridor because he couldn’t take his eyes of his daughter. He just wanted to hold her again. He was certain, as he peered at her, that she was the most precious thing in the entire world, and he would always, always treat her as such.

They put off stepping out into the waiting room. For a couple of minutes, they stood together in the corridor, Scorpius leaning against Albus’s arm and both their gazes on Lyra. She had slipped off to sleep in the comfort of Albus’s arms, and the sight of her tiny chest rising and falling beneath her blanket and her light eyelashes resting against her cheek were too precious to look away from. Scorpius turned his head and kissed his husband’s arm; Albus let his head fall so his cheek rested against the top of Scorpius's head in response. The moment was so wholly _perfect_ that Scorpius felt no rush to move; sharing that moment with Albus, with _his family_ , felt so fulfilling and right that he couldn’t imagine how anything could ever make him happier.

The tender tranquility of the moment shifted as Albus carefully moved Lyra over to one arm and reached into his trouser pocket with his right hand. Scorpius watched curiously.

“What are you doing?” he wondered.

In response, Albus withdrew the Pensieve orb his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday.

“One more spot left on this one. I’m glad my parents gave us another,” he commented.

Scorpius watched as he activated it. It glowed a brilliant light blue as it rested in Albus’s palm and began recording the memory. Scorpius leaned back against Albus and reached down to brush his finger against Lyra’s little hand.

“We’ll probably use up the new one in a week,” he realized.

“I was just thinking that,” Albus agreed.

They let the orb record until there was no space left, and once the irreplaceable memory was recorded forever, they faced the doorway.

“I hope they don’t wake her,” Albus fretted, his eyes on their baby.

“Me too. But knowing our family…” Scorpius trailed off. He and Albus exchanged a knowing look.

Thankfully, though, their family managed to control their excitement when they entered the waiting area, only giving soft gasps and _awww_ s. Scorpius smiled as everybody let the grandparents approach first, and to his surprise, Harry and Ginny hung back a bit, letting Draco be the first to visit with them.

“Oh…” his dad said. His voice trembled a bit. He approached Albus slowly, his eyes on the baby in Albus’s arms, and when he got close enough to genuinely see her, Scorpius saw him rub the fabric of his sleeve between his thumb and forefinger, a sure sign that he was nearing tears. He stood somewhat stiffly in front of Albus for a moment, speechless and brimming with emotion. Albus leaned in and held Lyra out. Scorpius grinned so hard that it made his face ache as Draco clumsily took her; it had clearly been a while since he’d held a baby. He stared down at her, his eyes wide and full of amazement.

“That’s your grandfather, Lyra,” Scorpius whispered gently. At those words, Scorpius saw the first few tears slip down his dad’s cheeks. He leaned over and kissed Lyra’s forehead just as Scorpius had done. He murmured something to her that Scorpius couldn’t quite hear. It sounded almost like _you’re a star, Lyra_.

Everybody was going on and on about how beautiful she was, about her strawberry blonde hair peeking out from beneath her hat, about her adorable, angelic features. It was all background noise to Scorpius. He realized that it would all be background noise to him now. He understood what his dad had tried to explain his entire life. From the moment you hold your child, the world gets simpler. It was Lyra. He was here _for Lyra_.

Ginny and Harry finally swooped in. Ginny lifted Lyra up expertly and inspected her; she and Harry were all grins.

“Look at that little face…” Ginny cooed. She leaned in and kissed Lyra’s tiny cheek twice. “You’re my sweet angel, Lyra, you just don’t know it yet. But don’t worry. You will.”

“Draco, I think she’s got your disgruntled expression,” Harry teased, his eyes still on his newest granddaughter. Scorpius noticed that Lyra’s expression _had_ furrowed slightly in what almost appeared to be annoyance. “Gin, seriously, I don’t think she likes being held like that…”

Sure enough, Lyra began crying in protest a second later. It was a shrill, demanding cry, one that made both Scorpius and Albus instinctively surge forward to answer it. Harry took Lyra at once and cradled her securely to his chest. She quieted down quickly enough once she was comfortable again.

“Show off,” Ginny muttered to Harry. He knocked into her side with a grin. She leaned against him afterwards and smiled at Lyra. After a moment, Scorpius glanced down at Albus, to see if his parents meeting their daughter was making him as tearful as Draco meeting her had done to Scorpius. Albus was smiling proudly, but Scorpius could tell he was already antsy to hold Lyra again; he wasn’t sure how they were meant to wait as _everybody_ held her. Ginny looked over towards the family grouped behind them. “All right, Lulu. You’re up.”

Surprisingly, Lily hung back. She shoved Hugo forward. “Nah, Hugo called next.”

Hugo frowned. “Huh? I did not… _ow_! I mean…yes! Okay! Right! Let me see that baby?”

“No, come on, Lily,” Albus argued. He walked over towards his little sister and slung an arm around her shoulders. She locked her legs stubbornly and refused to be moved. Her large belly kept Albus from attempting to manhandle her over towards Ginny and Lyra as he might have done only a few months prior. “You have to hold her. You helped bring her here.”

“No, I think everybody else should go first,” she insisted uneasily. “I don’t feel so well.”

Scorpius could tell she was just genuinely anxious about it (and clearly so could Caden). Caden stepped up to Ginny.

“May I hold her?” he asked. It was so hopeful and hesitant that Ginny immediately passed Lyra over, probably missing that Caden was just trying to get the pressure off Lily.

“Of course you can,” Ginny told him gently. “You’re family, Caden. This—” she gestured at Lily’s bulbous stomach—“only makes that more official.”

“And a wedding ring would make it _actually_ official,” Molly piped up (a bit bitterly).

“Merlin, let it go, Gran,” Lily groaned. Molly responded to her attitude by thwacking her on the arm; Lily hardly seemed to notice.

Even if Caden’s initial intention had been to save Lily from being pressured into holding Lyra before she was ready, he seemed positively overjoyed to find himself holding Scorpius and Albus’s baby. Scorpius smiled as Caden caressed Lyra’s little hand and smiled down at her. Caden looked up and met Scorpius’s eyes.

“She’s lovely,” he said honestly.

“She is! She’s so lovely!” Scorpius agreed eagerly. He squirmed with happiness; he wanted to jump onto the roof of St. Mungo’s and scream to everybody that his daughter was so _perfect._ “Look at her hair! Got a bit of Lily’s red, I think.”

“Nuh uh,” Lily said at once. That comment seemed to have piqued her interest. She _finally_ approached the baby, though she did it carefully, the way one might approach a dangerous creature. She peered over her boyfriend’s arm at the baby. Scorpius saw her eyes drift up to his smile and then back down to the baby. “I guess it sort of is. Can’t see much of it, though, ‘cause of the hat.” There was a short pause. Lily reached forward and very gently tapped the purple baby hat. She withdrew her finger quickly, though, like she feared being burned by something. "I like the purple. Purple's powerful."

Caden looked up at Albus and Scorpius. “Could I move the hat back a bit to see her hair?”

“Sure,” Albus permitted. Scorpius nodded. With their permission, Caden slowly inched the hat back. His smile only grew.

“She _does_ have some red,” he agreed.

“ _Fuck yeah_ ,” Lily hissed beneath her breath. Everybody fell silent. She looked up and met their questioning eyes. “What? My hair is my best feature. Everybody knows it.”

“Well? Are you going to hold her?” Ginny asked Lily. “Because if you’re not, I’ll just take her back…”

“No way, no repeats,” Molly scolded. “I’m next.”

“I…well…I…” Lily glanced up at Caden. They held eye contact for a long moment. Whatever they communicated, it seemed to work: Lily nodded. Scorpius could practically feel the anxiety coming off her in waves as Caden turned and carefully passed her the baby. Lily had held all James’s kids after they’d been born, but Scorpius had _never_ seen her nervous like this. He guessed she felt quite a bit of pressure now, knowing she’d be holding her own in only a few months’ time. And at first, he was really worried. Her grip was extremely awkward and she kept shifting Lyra around, clearly trying to find a position to hold her in that was secure and comfortable, her arms quivering like she'd just stepped out into the snow in a swimsuit. Her belly didn’t help matters, either; the size of it got in the way. But Scorpius took deep breaths and resisted the urge to walk over and pull Lyra away. He took Albus’s hand when Albus started to walk over and do just that.

“Wait,” he whispered to Albus. Instinctively, he knew it was important for her to get this right on her own. He knew intervening now would almost certainly shatter any semblance of maternal confidence Lily might have begun to build up, and at this late in her pregnancy, that would have dire emotional repercussions. 

“ _Wait_?” Albus hissed back, pained. “She looks like she’s going to drop her! Why’s she acting like that?! Like she’s never held a baby before?! She held all of James's babies! She carried newborn Evra around Hogwarts! She’s acting like an idiot, Scorpius, and I can’t take it, and it makes me _very nervous_!” Albus withdrew his hand from Scorpius’s and clenched his fists uneasily at his sides.

“I know, I know, just give her a moment, okay?” Scorpius begged. “She’ll figure it out.”

Albus groaned and shifted his weight from foot to foot impatiently, but he didn’t step forward to take their daughter from Lily. And sure enough, after only a few more moments, Lily found a way to hold her that worked for her. Once Lyra was secure, Lily peered down at her, a smile tugging persistently at the corners of her lips. She seemed too afraid to move her arms at all to do much but look at her, but that didn’t seem to deter her too much. She took in the baby quietly, and as Scorpius watched her, he felt his own eyes grow misty. He wasn’t alone. He didn’t know what was passing over the room, but he was suddenly overcome with how powerful this entire experience had been. The realization that so many people had helped bring this one little baby into the world was almost too much for him to bear. And it was clearly too much for Lily, too. To _everybody’s_ surprise, after only two or three minutes of holding Lyra, she burst into tears, all at once and powerfully (like she did everything in life).

Molly jumped in and pulled Lyra from her just as her arms began to shake again. Both Harry and Caden reached for Lily at the same moment; she looked between them, obviously sensing that choosing between them would cause definite consequences no matter who she chose, and then she walked forward and collapsed into her mum’s open arms.

“Oh,” Ginny said, clearly touched to have been chosen. She stuck her tongue out at Harry. He and Caden exchanged a sheepish look. She stroked Lily’s hair gently.

“Mummy, I’m p-pregnant,” Lily sobbed into Ginny’s shoulder.

“ _We know_ ,” nearly everybody chorused.

Lily only cried harder. “R-Really pregnant and t-there’s r-real babies like that i-inside of me!”

“Oh, love…” Ginny said softly. She continued stroking Lily’s hair. “Does that frighten you?”

“Yes! It’s fucked up and amazing and—and—” she broke off with a hiccup. “I missed you.”

While Ginny and Lily retreated to the corner to have a chat, Scorpius and Albus nervously watched as the remaining Weasleys greeted Lyra. James arrived a few moments later, Delilah half-asleep in his arms and still in her little pajamas, but he made a beeline for Nora, not even stopping long enough to see the baby. His older four kids, however…

“BABY LYRA!” Evra and Rory chorused.

“ _AUNTIE LULU!_ ” Finnigan shouted. _Uh oh_. Finnigan took off running towards Lily at once; Harry only barely managed to catch him before he ran right into his aunt’s belly. Finnigan went limp in his granddad’s arms-- which caused him to flop over so he was being held upside down, his curls almost grazing the hospital floor-- and stared incredulously at Lily. “Lulu, you have a _baby_ in there now?! Who put _that_ there?! What?!!”  

Lily jabbed her thumb in Caden’s direction. “He put it there.”

Finnigan stared dumbly at Caden. “But you can’t put babies in anybody: you’re not married!”

“Oh. Er…” Caden glanced at Harry and Ginny for help. Ginny leaned over and peered at Finnigan (who was still hanging upside down).

“Finnigan, are you just going to hang out there?! What about hugs for your auntie?!”

While Finnigan had his questions momentarily deferred for the sake of Lulu hugs, Scorpius and Albus stood nervously beside Molly as she helped Evra hold Lyra. After Evra had the baby in her arms, though, Scorpius wasn’t sure why he’d been worried; she was essentially a natural. She supported Lyra’s head with ease and seemed entirely confident.

“Aww,” Evra cooed. She leaned over and kissed Lyra’s cheek. She looked up at her uncles. “She is a sweet, sweet girl.”

Albus laughed, amused. He shared a fond smile with Scorpius.

“I want to hold the baby!” Henry said eagerly. He squirmed impatiently as Molly carefully settled Lyra in his arms. He smiled down at her for a few moments, looked up, and said: "I'm done.” That was that. Rory held her next, but she was a bit nervous about it, and quickly ran off to play with Henry instead.  

Everybody else saw Lyra briefly and then Albus and Scorpius took Lyra back to the hospital room for her first bottle and some quiet time. They allowed three to five people to come back at once so everybody could continue visiting. Draco, Molly, Arthur, Harry, and Ginny came back with them first. Harry, Ginny, and Arthur chatted with Nora—who seemed in _much_ better spirits with Delilah snoozing happily in her arms and James sitting beside her on the bed—while Molly and Draco joined him and Albus on a sofa Victoire had brought in. Scorpius sat between Albus and his dad, Lyra cradled in his arms as he gave her her very first bottle. Scorpius felt so happy in such a strange way; he was certain he’d never been happier, but it all felt so…dreamlike. He couldn’t believe this was happening, but at the same time, he already couldn’t imagine how he’d lived without her. And he wished terribly that his mum was sitting beside him so that he could share this moment with her.

As he was gazing down at his little girl, he saw her thin eyelids flutter. He felt his heart lurch. After a moment of anticipation, her eyes opened, and Scorpius found himself looking directly into his daughter’s eyes. He felt the most astounding wave of love flood his body; it reminded him of that extreme swell of emotion he’d felt the first time he kissed her forehead. It rendered him completely speechless. He couldn’t do a thing but stare at his child in adoration, certain that there was nothing in the entire world that he wouldn’t do for her.

“Ooh,” Molly said gleefully. She leaned in and peered at Lyra. “Look at those eyes!”

They were absolutely stunning. Scorpius wasn’t sure what to call them exactly—a blue-green grey, almost—and he knew she would only have that shade for a little while, as newborns were never born with the precise eye shade they’d have permanently, but they were breathtaking regardless.

“They’re beautiful,” he heard Albus choke.

“I’ve only seen that particular shade on a newborn one time out of all my grandchildren. And you know which one it was?” Molly asked.

Scorpius looked up. He hardly dared to hope. Molly was smiling softly at Albus.

“My green-eyed one.”

Albus swallowed hard; Scorpius watched his Adam’s apple bob. He blinked rapidly against tears. “You…you think she’s going to have my eyes, Gran?”

“There are no guarantees, but I know newborn babies…I’ve never been wrong yet,” she said.

Scorpius gently passed Lyra to Albus. Albus held her and peered into her eyes lovingly, his still damp and churning with emotion. Scorpius looked up at his dad.

“She’s absolutely wonderful, Scorpius,” Draco said. He smiled.  

“She is. Our Lyra. Lyra Astoria. Dad, Mum would have loved her so much.”

Scorpius’s tears finally worked their way past his eyelashes. For a moment, he could see it perfectly: his mum at his side, holding her granddaughter, healthy and happy and _there_. He hadn’t realized how desperately he wanted her to experience this until right at that moment. He felt robbed of time with her; he felt like Lyra had been robbed of time with her, too. He had been suppressing the sadness he felt over his mum’s absence for months. The emotions from his daughter’s birth were volatile enough to bring it all forward. His dad reached over and wrapped an arm around Scorpius as his tears slipped down his cheeks for the second time that day. This time, it was loss rather than gain that brought them forth. 

“She would have,” Draco murmured.

* * *

 

“And you’re _sure_ you don’t need help tonight?” Ginny pressed. She hovered over Albus and Scorpius as they packed up their belongings from the hospital room. “Your dad and I could stay in the spare room and help. That way you’re still getting the sleep you need.”

“I can help, too,” Scorpius’s dad offered quickly. He was reclined on the hospital bed with Lyra snoozing in his arms; his chest was quickly becoming Lyra’s most preferred napping place. This was the fourth time she’d fallen asleep in Draco’s arms that day. It made Scorpius indescribably happy to see how happy Lyra made his dad and how safe his dad made Lyra feel. “The more people the better.”

Scorpius glanced over at Albus. He was trying to find a delicate way to decline the offer. Albus didn’t bother.

“Nope. Thanks, but no,” Albus said at once. “We don’t really want the hovering.”

“Oh. Okay, Al, just…jump right in there with that. We’re not even going to try and make it sound nice. Okay. I see,” Scorpius said. He dropped one of Lyra’s blankets into their suitcase and leaned over the bed. He dropped a kiss to Lyra’s cheek. “I hope you don’t pick up your daddy’s lack of manners.”

Scorpius's dad gave him a brief look that said he’d been thinking the same thing.

Albus shrugged. “What? We _don’t_ want them hovering. Mum, Dad, Draco—we appreciate it, but we just really want to be a _family_ , you know? We want time for just us three. We can do it. Scorpius and I took five different infant care classes. I actually paid attention in at least two of them. Scorpius took four boxes worth of notes _and_ he’s a children’s healer. He’s who you’d call if something went wrong in the first place. We’ve got this.”

The three older parents looked at each other.

“Al, it’s much harder than you think it is,” Harry said.

Albus scoffed. He crossed his arms uneasily. “You think I can’t handle it? You were all teary and excited about _Lily_ having babies and you seem totally okay with that and you think _she_ can handle two but you’re worried about _me_? Sort out your perspective, Dad. Lily left Evra in a muggle washing machine.”

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you once leave Henry inside a cupboard when he was a couple months old?”

Scorpius winced. Albus’s cheeks turned red. He hated when people brought that up.

“If you don’t think I can do it, Dad, just say that. You think I’ll be a rubbish dad. I get it,” he snapped.

Albus’s emotions had been running high since the birth (as had Scorpius’s), so Albus’s outburst didn’t surprise Scorpius at all. But it clearly took Harry off guard. He parted his lips to argue back, thought better of it, and then glanced helplessly at Ginny as if to say _what the hell just happened? Where did I mess that up?_

“We don’t think that at all, Albus,” Draco said. “We just want to make sure you two feel supported.”

“Maybe _you_ don’t think that,” Albus said, his narrowed eyes still on his dad. “But he does.”

“I don’t! Albus, I don’t think that at all! That’s not what I was saying!” Harry cried, frustrated. He turned to his wife. “Gin!”

Ginny looked between Albus and Harry. “Okay. No.”

Everybody waited. She didn’t say anything else.

“…No?” Draco repeated, confused.

She gestured between her son and her husband. “ _NO_. We’re _not_ doing this again. I’m too old for this. Do you understand me? No. Communicate. Correctly. With your emotions. No fighting.”

Albus crossed his arms stubbornly. Harry did, too. After a long, uncomfortable silence (nobody dared to break it; Ginny’s stern look told them she wouldn’t accept anybody speaking except Harry and Albus), Albus said: “I’m feeling really insecure about all of this.”

 _Honesty_. Scorpius looked at Albus, impressed that he’d admitted that. He hadn’t even fully expressed it to Scorpius yet, though Scorpius had caught on easily. Harry relaxed as soon as Albus dropped his defensiveness.

“I felt the same exact way when your mum had James. That’s why I offered to help. Because I felt really lost and I didn’t want you to feel like that. But I know we’re different people, and if you want to do it alone—if that’s what will make you feel more confident—then that’s what I want you to do. I never thought you couldn’t do it…I just wanted you to feel confident in your own ability to be a dad. That’s all, Albus.”

Albus nodded. “I get it now. I’m sorry. I’ve been really…emotional, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Harry said at once, though Scorpius privately thought he had no reason at all to apologize.

“There!” Ginny proclaimed. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it? So it’s sorted. You two can just Floo us if you need help and we’ll be there immediately if you do. Oh, and for the record, Al, I am _not ‘_ totally okay’ with Lily’s ability to watch over two newborns. I’ve already made arrangements for your dad and me to spend half of July and all of August and September in New Zealand with her. Tell her if you want—or not—but I’ve already had Percy schedule the Portkey and my mind won’t be changed. Newborn twins are too much for _any_ couple to handle alone, especially not in a country without any family around. I don’t know _what_ that girl is thinking…actually, I _never_ know what she's thinking…”

“What? We’re going to New Zealand in July?” Harry muttered to Ginny. “Since when?”

“Since this morning. Did I forget to tell you?”

“Er, yeah. You did. What about my classes?”

Ginny stared at Harry like he’d just sprouted an extra head. “Harry. _Newborn twin grandbabies._ Stuff your classes, honestly! Lulu is having _twins_.”

His expression evened out. He grinned. “Yeah, no, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m sure Roxanne will agree to step in while I’m gone.”

“She does love Defense Against the Dark Arts. And pranking students,” Ginny nodded.

Scorpius glanced over at Albus. He looked equally skeptical. He could tell Albus was thinking the same thing: _I’m glad we’re no longer students_. They quickly looked away from each other and stifled their laughter.

The three grandparents were less sure of the arrangement when it came time to part ways. Ginny wrapped Scorpius in a hug that felt never-ending.

“You’re _sure_?” she asked again.

Scorpius gently patted her back. “Yes. And if something happens, you, Harry, and Dad will be the first to know.”

Ginny turned and pulled Albus into a suffocating hug. Scorpius exchanged a brief hug with his father. His dad set his hands on his shoulder once they pulled back.

“You’re still coming over for dinner on the fifth, right? Gemma’s bringing some wine from her family’s winery.”

Scorpius hesitated. Drinking alcohol only three days after his daughter was born seemed like a bad idea, but he didn’t want to turn down Gemma’s obvious efforts at bonding with him and Albus.

“Yeah, we’ll be there. I probably won’t have a full glass, but I’d love to taste it,” he said. “You two can stop by tomorrow if you like. You too, Ginny and Harry. We’ll be around!”

Ginny and Harry snorted. “You’ll _definitely_ be around for the next month or so.”

It sounded a bit ominous. Scorpius didn’t really understand what they were saying. He let it go with a shrug, exchanged a few more goodbyes, lifted up their suitcases, and glanced down at Lyra, now bundled up in Albus’s arms.

“Are you ready to go home, Lyra?” Albus asked her sweetly.

Scorpius certainly was.

* * *

 

The first evening home with their daughter was something out of a dream.

Scorpius felt like he and Albus had fatherhood perfected by hour two, like they were naturals at parenting in a special way nobody else in the world was. They had caught onto Lyra’s sleeping and eating schedules easily while in hospital; the timer they’d purchased (so they’d always remember to feed her every three to four hours on the dot) was largely unneeded, as both of them never failed to forget when it was time for another bottle. They traded off nappy changing with ease, took turns cuddling with her in the rocking chair, and found it exciting to fit their day around her. For their first dinner as a family that night, Albus cooked dinner while Scorpius swayed with Lyra to various songs from the ‘spa’ channel on the muggle radio. She enjoyed it immensely; he quickly found that gently rocking her to music by a muggle named Enya quieted almost every one of her crying fits. He and Albus were on cloud nine as they settled her down in her Moses basket. She snoozed as they ate dinner. Scorpius’s heart had never been so full.

“This is what we were meant to do,” Albus told Scorpius, his gaze on their daughter as she slept.

“We’re _so good at it_ , _Albus_!” Scorpius exclaimed. He bounced excitedly in his seat. “Us!! You and me! Albus and Scorpius! We’re _good at it_!”

Albus set his fist down on the table. “We’re damn good dads!”

“Yes! Yes! We’re dam—very, very good dads!” Scorpius agreed with glee. He reached across the table and took his husband’s hands. “You’re as good a dad as you are a husband. I always knew you'd be.”

Albus’s eyes softened. He lifted their joined hand and kissed Scorpius’s knuckles. “You’re as good a papa as you are a husband.”

Scorpius beamed. “I don’t know what everybody was so worried about. This isn’t difficult. This is _amazing_.” Scorpius sighed happily. “I’m so glad this is our life.”

“It couldn’t be any better,” Albus agreed.

* * *

 

The first time Lyra woke in the night—only an hour after they’d fallen asleep—Scorpius and Albus were feeling very cheerful about it.

“I’ll take care of it!” Albus offered.

Scorpius quickly flung the duvet off his legs. “No, no, I will! You can go back to sleep!”

“No, really,” Albus pressed. He peered at Scorpius in the dark. “I can do it, don’t worry.”

“No… _you_ don’t worry, _I_ can do it…” Scorpius said.

They paused.

“Flip a galleon?” Albus suggested.

Scorpius grinned into the darkness. He yawned. “Good idea.”

Albus groped along the bedside table for his wand, summoned a galleon from the massive jar on their chest of drawers (they were saving to buy a holiday home), and chose a side. He ultimately won the coin toss so Scorpius reluctantly pulled the blankets back over his legs. He listened as Albus cooed at Lyra. He lifted her from the cot at the foot of their bed and carried her from the room. Scorpius listened to the sounds of Albus’s soft words as he spoke to their wailing baby. Within a few minutes, she’d quieted back down, and Scorpius felt a bit heartsick. He wanted to be with them. He knew sleep was important, but his baby was _more_ important, and his husband, too. He threw the blankets back off him and quietly walked towards Lyra’s nursery. He peeked in the room. Albus was rocking Lyra; she was in a different sleepsuit than before, leading Scorpius to assume Albus had had some trouble changing her nappy without incident. Albus had his head leaning against the padded back of the rocking chair, and with both his and Lyra’s eyes shut, Scorpius found endearing similarities in their expressions.

“She looks like you,” Scorpius blurted.

Albus smiled. He opened his eyes a moment later and glanced down at their daughter. “Yeah?”

“It’s adorable,” Scorpius admitted.

Albus leaned over Lyra and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. “Do you hear that, pumpkin? We’re _adorable_!”

Lyra gave the most precious yawn that Scorpius had ever seen. Everything she did was so cute it made him weak at the knees.

“I think she’s ready to go back to sleep,” Albus said. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only two hours ‘til she should eat next. Should we go ahead or no?”

“No, let’s stay on schedule,” Scorpius decided. He walked over and took their daughter from Albus’s arms. He leaned down and nuzzled her hair affectionately.

“Such an angel,” he said.

“How did we get so lucky?” Albus wondered,

“I have no idea, but I’m not going to question it.”

* * *

 

They slept for another hour.

Lyra woke them again.

Scorpius was feeling a bit less excited about it this time. She had pulled him from a very deep sleep and he was having a hard time separating his mind from his dreams long enough to focus on anything. Going by the long sigh Albus gave, he was feeling a similar way.

“What time is it?” Scorpius slurred.

“Ugh…I dunno…”

Lyra kept wailing. Scorpius went to climb out of the bed, but as he stood, he got an intense wave of vertigo.

“I’ve got it,” Albus said tiredly. “It’s only an hour off from her feeding time. She’s probably just hungry. I’m feeding her early.”

“Okay,” Scorpius agreed, too tired to argue. “You can rock her and I’ll get the bottle.”

“Okay,” Albus said, his tone as tired as Scorpius’s.

Scorpius stumbled unsteadily from the bed and walked towards the kitchen with his eyes shut against the light. He pulled one of the bottles from the ice box and realized too late that he’d left his wand in the bedroom. He went back to his and Albus’s room, got his wand, cast a heating charm on the bottle to warm it, and then traveled to the nursery, where Lyra’s cries were still echoing towards him. Albus appeared to be half asleep when he stepped in. Scorpius nudged his husband’s thigh with his knee.

“You can go to bed. I’ve got it,” he said.

Albus yawned deeply. “No, I’m okay.”

Scorpius was unwilling to leave Albus alone to do this when he knew they were both exhausted. He pushed the armchair in the corner over so he could be beside Albus and collapsed down in it.

“Both of us, then,” he decided. He passed the bottle to Albus and leaned his head against his arm as Albus fed Lyra. Her appetite wasn’t lacking; she immediately took to the bottle and drank nearly all of it before drifting back to sleep. Scorpius carefully took Lyra from Albus, tip-toed back to their bedroom, settled her back in her cot, and then crawled back underneath the covers. He smiled as he felt Albus’s body curl around his. He snuggled back against his husband, warm and insanely comfortable, and eagerly let himself slip back towards sleep…

More crying.

Scorpius jumped awake with a ragged gasp.

He had no idea how long it’d been since the last time. It felt like only a few seconds had passed. He knew it hadn’t been four hours, because they had alarms set to make sure they fed her on schedule, and the alarms hadn’t gone off. Scorpius felt uneasy; his heart was pounding erratically and his body felt weak. Being pulled from a deep sleep so many times left him feeling disoriented.

“What’s wrong with her?” he heard Albus ask, anxiety flooding his tone. “It’s only been an hour. Why is she awake again? We changed her right before laying her back down. Do you think she’s ill? Scorpius, will you make sure she’s not ill?”

Scorpius stumbled over to the cot. He reached in and pulled their daughter out. He walked her down to her nursery, changed her still-clean nappy (just for good measure), rocked her, and yet her crying persisted. He checked her temperature—normal. He walked up and down their flat hall, humming sleepily to Lyra, hoping it’d comfort her, but she was unhappy about something. What? What was she unhappy about? What was he missing? She wasn’t ill. She didn’t need to eat. Her nappy was clean. What? Where were Scorpius's parenting skills lacking?

Scorpius relit the bedroom chandelier when he reentered. Albus was standing in front of one of the bookshelves in their bedroom, fiddling with the muggle radio.

“What are you doing?” Scorpius yawned. He sat on the bed. His muscles ached from exhaustion. He gently rocked Lyra in his arms. “Lyra, it’s okay…shhh…your dads love you, it’s okay…”

She wasn’t comforted.

“Trying to find that—stupid—bloody—radio—ah-ha! Was this it?”

Albus turned around expectantly as calm music drifted from the speakers. Scorpius honestly had no idea if it was the same station they’d had on while making dinner (the one Lyra had seemed to like so much).

“Yeah,” he lied. He just needed to lie down. He shuffled back towards his side of the bed, a yawn climbing up his throat. “Will you make sure I don’t fall asleep? I don’t want to drop her or roll over on her.”

“Yeah,” Albus promised him. He turned the radio up slightly and then joined Scorpius on the bed. Scorpius rested Lyra on his chest and gently rubbed her back. After a few moments, she settled down. Scorpius was too afraid to move for fear of waking her.

“What do I do?” he asked Albus nervously.

“Er…uh…” Albus rubbed over his tired eyes as he thought. “Where’s that thing James gave us? The weird foam cot thing that you put in the bed?”

“Oh!” Scorpius had forgotten about that. “Erm…did we leave it in the nursery wardrobe? On top of it maybe?”

“I’ll go look,” Albus said.

Scorpius had to keep smacking himself lightly to keep from drifting off to sleep. Lyra’s little heartbeat and the steady rise and fall of her chest against his was extremely soothing; he wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep, too. After what felt like ages, Albus returned, the weird cot-thing in hand. It was a large, rectangular piece of firm foam with a dip in the middle to safely cradle babies, so they could sleep in the bed safely without being rolled on. Scorpius had thought it far too risky and had said they’d never need it (which was why it’d been banished to the wardrobe), but now he was breathlessly relieved to see it. Albus climbed back onto the bed carefully, placed the foam in place, and then watched nervously as Scorpius slowly moved Lyra to it. They held their breath for the first few seconds after they set her down, but thankfully, she didn’t stir.

“Thank Merlin for my brother and his obscene amount of babies,” Albus muttered.

“Yes. Go James,” Scorpius agreed sleepily.

He didn’t even remember falling back asleep. Maybe because he spent so little time actually resting. Again, in what felt like mere seconds, he was woken. He was so exhausted and frustrated that he felt tears were imminent. When he had imagined the first few weeks, the lack of sleep hadn’t even been a worry; he felt he could handle it easily. He had _not_ expected to react as poorly as he was. He realized now that he had _never_ experienced anything like this before. He had never been yanked from sleep every hour or so, over and over again, after an already exhausting day. He had severely underestimated the impact the lack of sleep would have on him. He wasn’t feeling like a wonderful papa at all.

“I don’t know what she needs,” Albus said. His voice shook a bit. Scorpius sat up and looked over at him; he was holding Lyra already, but he looked close to tears, too. “Her nappy is clean. It’s not time for another bottle yet. I don’t know what she’s telling me.”

“I don’t either,” Scorpius admitted. Panic was hovering close to the surface for both of them. Scorpius tried to bat it back, but it was difficult with how exhausted he was. What if they couldn't do this after all? “I don’t know what to do for her.”

“Maybe we should Floo my mum,” Albus said. Scorpius had never seen his eyes more exhausted. “I don’t know what else to do.” 

Scorpius hadn’t wanted to have to do that. He had felt so _confident_ about all of this before bed. But he couldn’t keep his emotions rational when he could hardly even keep himself conscious. What did Lyra need? What did he know? What hadn’t they done? They were comforting her, keeping her clean and well fed, the temperature of the flat was perfect, they…

“Oh!!” Scorpius bounced in place, causing Albus (and therefore Lyra) to jostle. Lyra’s cries increased in volume. Scorpius quickly yanked his pajama top over his head and reached out towards Albus. “I know! I know what to try!”

Albus stared at him incredulously. “Scorpius, you can’t lactate, have you completely lost your mind?!”

“What?” Scorpius said, momentarily confused. Albus gestured at his bared chest. “Oh! Oh, no! No! Skin-to-skin contact—kangaroo care! The muggles call it that! Do you remember?! Our instructor Tara said that babies are soothed by it and it helps them feel safe and bond! Let me see her!”

“I trust you, but I still think you’re a bit mad,” Albus admitted. He leaned over the foam cot and passed their distraught daughter to Scorpius. He kissed her damp cheeks and talked soothingly to her as he unzipped her sleepsuit. Once she was just in her nappy, he rested her on her tummy on his bare chest, and Albus leaned over and draped her soft green baby blanket over them. For the first few seconds, Scorpius thought he’d actually only upset Lyra _more_. She shrieked and squirmed. But he forced himself to be patient. He set a gentle hand on her back to keep her from falling off. He focused on his own breathing until it was steady, deep, and even. After another minute, Lyra’s cries gradually pandered off. She settled and stopped fidgeting so much. Scorpius could feel her tiny, fluttering heart gradually calm and slow against his. Her breathing evened out. He felt her relax completely, and as she did, a wave of perfect contentment washed over him. He didn’t know why…maybe it was all in his head, maybe Tara had brainwashed him…but he was certain that this had been the right thing to do. He felt calmer and more in-tune to her. He felt like this was what she’d wanted all along. He imagined it must be unsettling to go from living in somebody’s womb, listening all day to their heartbeat and feeling warm and safe, to being out in the world alone in the silence and openness. Being here, where she could feel her papa’s body warmth, hear his heartbeat, and feel secure in his embrace, must have been so much more comforting than anything else.

“Good call,” Albus said, relieved.

He had finally found a way to comfort her, but unfortunately, it was time for her next feeding before Scorpius knew it. He fed her while Albus yawned and struggled to stay awake. She drifted off against Albus’s bare chest afterwards, and once she was deeply asleep, they settled her down in the foam cot. The three of them slept for two consecutive hours (the most sleep they'd gotten up to that point), and then she woke again. And again. And again. By the time the sun rose, Scorpius and Albus were beyond sleep deprived. Scorpius had _never_ felt so physically horrible. He felt as if he’d fallen from his broom at great heights. Albus was similarly worn out. 

“In case you were curious, this is _exactly_ how I feel right after bleeding out,” he told Scorpius over breakfast.

Scorpius watched Lyra as she had her morning bottle. He had to admit that she was _still_ breathtakingly precious and adorable, even at his current level of exhaustion.

“I feel horrible,” he agreed. “And I think our parents were right.”

“Yeah. This was _way_ harder than I expected. How are we meant to live if every night is like last night? I already feel like I might die.”

Scorpius felt tearful when he imagined going another night on such little sleep. “I don’t know. I think we should ring my dad and your parents.”

“Probably,” Albus agreed. “Even if just for an hour or so…if we could just have a nap…just _one_ …” he trailed off hopefully. The idea of a _nap_ was so appealing that Scorpius wanted to Floo their parents right at that very moment. But he wasn’t sure if he was ready to admit that they couldn’t handle it yet.

“Why don’t we try to nap when she does today?” Scorpius suggested. “Rose and Iset are coming over for dinner—”

“Damn it! That's tonight?! You're sure?" Scorpius nodded. Albus groaned. "I forgot about that! What were we _thinking_ to agree to visitors right after we brought Lyra home?!”

“We thought it would be way easier,” Scorpius reminded Albus.

“Can we reschedule?”

“We _could_ but they still haven’t met Lyra since they were in Sweden up until last night—”

Scorpius’s words were interrupted by the sound of the Floo. He and Albus barely had enough time to exchange a horrified look before the sound of somebody falling from the kitchen fireplace reached their ears.

“ _Ouch_!” they heard James mutter. “AL, WHY DID YOU LEAVE A CHAIR RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR—oh, hello!”

He stopped screaming as he stepped into the sitting room and noticed their close presence. He beamed at them. He and Nora were the only family members besides Rose who’d yet to really see Lyra, so Scorpius guessed his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

“Look at that! You did it! Made it through the night! Everybody’s healthy and happy! Nice one, Al!” James exclaimed happily. He walked over to them, leaned over, and pulled Lyra up into his arms. Scorpius frowned and looked down at his now-empty arms as James cradled the baby. “She’s a beauty! I think she might end up with green eyes, too. Hello, Lyra! I’m your Uncle Jamie! And I’ve loved you from the very start!”

“That’s what Gran said,” Albus piped up eagerly. “About her eyes.” He leaned to the side to peer behind James. “Where’s Nora? Didn’t she come?”

James looked from Lyra back to his little brother. “That’s actually why I’m here. Guess where she is?”

Scorpius felt his heart jolt. His first thought was something negative, like back at St. Mungo’s or home crying, but the smile still on James’s face told him it wasn’t anything quite so awful.

“…Where? Just tell me, James, I’m exhausted and don’t want to play guessing games,” Albus grumbled.

“She’s okay, right? There are no complications?” Scorpius fretted.

“No, she’s doing great, Scorpius, don’t worry,” James reassured him. He beamed brightly. “Our new son is here.”

Scorpius’s eyes widened.

“Already?! Seriously?! When was he born?” demanded Albus.

“Yesterday evening! I didn’t want to Floo last night in case I woke up Lyra. He was born a few weeks early, but he’s doing _great_ , and we’ve had him home since last night. His name is Benji and he already fits right in. Mum and Dad are there now battling for baby time with Dean and Seamus.”

Scorpius couldn’t stop smiling. He was so happy for them _and_ for Benji, who had to be the luckiest abandoned child in the world to get to settle with the Potters. And he knew (and hoped) that the new baby would help Nora recover from any emotional difficulties giving Lyra up might have caused.

“So you’ve had a newborn at your house all night long,” Albus realized.

James didn’t get where Albus was headed with that. Scorpius did.

“Yeah. Our son came home last night, like I said,” James repeated.

Albus turned away from the breakfast prep and stared at James in disbelief.

“So you had a newborn, a toddler, a three-year-old, two five-year-olds-- well, almost five in Finnigan's case, and a six-year-old in your house last night and you still managed to get eight hours of sleep and show up here at seven AM in a sunshiney mood. Do you have a sodding time turner?!”

James laughed heartily once. And then again. And then he laughed some more. “Al,” he finally said, his eyes damp from the force of his laughter. “I slept about four hours last night. _Eight hours_ …I don’t think I’ve had eight hours of sleep since Nora and I went with Ben and Evvie on their honeymoon.”

“Wow,” Scorpius appreciated. James _did_ look remarkably well-rested and in high spirits; he knew he and Albus looked the opposite. “You’re handling four hours well.”

James puffed his chest out proudly. “I taught my body to interpret the lack of sleep as a reward rather than a punishment. You get less sleep, sure, but you get to spend the hours you’d otherwise spend unconscious with your _baby_ , and if that’s not a reward, I don’t know _what_ is.”

Scorpius had to admit that he had not felt quite as optimistic about the situation last night while in the thick of it all. Going by the slightly nauseated look Albus was giving his brother, he hadn’t either.

“Yeah. Okay. And meanwhile, for us that are, you know, actual human beings and not freaky Dad Robots, what are _we_ meant to do when we only get two hours?” demanded Albus.

Scorpius piped up. “It’ll be a long time ‘til she starts sleeping for longer periods, right? We feel like we got hexed by Lily or your mum or punched in the face or…” Scorpius trailed off. “Actually, you know the Cruciatus, James?”

James nodded, a bright smile still in place. “Yeah! Of course, Scorpius. Remember, Lily’s little Mini Death Eater mates used it on me before they were reformed?”

Scorpius hadn’t forgotten. He nodded. “You know how your body is all sore afterwards? All your muscles?”

James nodded again.

“That’s how we feel,” Scorpius admitted. He sagged back against the chair and sighed. It felt good to admit that to somebody who was more experienced, especially since he knew James wouldn’t judge him or worry about him (he knew his dad would worry).

James nodded knowingly. “Parents always talk about the lack of sleep but nobody _really_ understands how difficult it is ‘til they’ve actually got a newborn in the house. But tell me about last night. Only two hours? Really? Was she fussy?”

“ _So fussy_ ,” Albus admitted. He still sounded surprised. “I really don’t understand. She was an _angel_ and then suddenly-- bam. Everything upset her. We couldn’t get her to calm, and when we finally did, she only slept for an hour or so. We were up with her every hour or two over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.” Scorpius saw his husband’s cheeks pink. “And it’s not that I’m complaining! I love her more than my own life already and—”

“Let’s get one thing clear because if we don’t, you’re _not_ going to survive new parenthood: you’re allowed to complain,” James said. He pointed at the chair, and to Scorpius’s surprise, Albus listened to his elder brother. He walked over and sat beside Scorpius, folded his hands in his lap, and waited for his brother’s advice. James pulled out the chair across from them and sat down in it, Lyra still in his arms. He’d pulled the bottle with him when he first grabbed her, but she’d fallen asleep halfway through it. He set the bottle on the table and looked back at them. “You said _we were up every hour_ —that’s your first mistake. You two can’t _both_ answer every wake-up call. You’ve got to take turns.”

Scorpius frowned. When he glanced at Albus, he was frowning, too.

“But I want to be where they are. My husband and my baby,” Scorpius admitted, his voice small.

“Yeah,” Albus agreed. “We both wanted to help.”

“And you both can…in shifts. You both doing it is not sustainable in the long-term. I know you want to be together…I didn’t even want to leave Nora's side long enough to take one N.E.W.T after Evra was born…but those extra two hours at a time you could get if you rotate makes a _huge_ difference. And you need to let Mum and Dad help. Draco, too. Nora and I lived with Mum and Dad for Evra’s first few months and that made a huge difference. It’s _not_ failing to have help. It takes a village, right?”

Scorpius could certainly get behind that logic. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, James.”

James gave them a reassuring smile. “It gets much easier, I promise. The first few nights home are always the hardest. You’ll get the hang of it sooner than you expect and she’ll start settling for longer periods of time.”

“We’re just _so tired_ ,” Albus groaned. He let his face fall into his hands. Scorpius felt a yawn work its way up his throat as if his body felt the need to affirm that he, too, was exhausted.

“Have somebody come over today so you two can have a nap,” James suggested. “Mum or Dad or Draco. Lily if you’re feeling brave.”

“I’m not,” Albus assured James. “Feeling brave, that is.”

“We were thinking about that,” Scorpius said. He looked at Albus. “I think our parents would understand.”

Albus crossed his arms. “I just really wanted to be great at it naturally and not need any help at all.”

“Yeah, well, wouldn’t we all with everything in life?” James pointed out.

“Says the person who has almost never needed help on anything,” Albus muttered beneath his breath bitterly. James missed it. He rose from the table, walked over, and handed Lyra back to Scorpius. Scorpius gently kissed her temple and straightened one of her little socks (she slept right through it). He hadn’t even realized he’d felt uneasy with her away from him until she was back in his arms and he felt a wave of relief.

“I’ve got to get home to my family, but I wanted to swing by and tell you about Benji, finally hold my new niece, and see how you two are holding up. It’ll get better, I promise. You can do it! Take loads of photos, too, because before you know it they’re nearly seven-years-old.”

He sighed wistfully, a far-off look in his eyes as he presumably remembered Evra’s infancy.

“Yeah, all right. Thanks, James,” Albus said.

“It’s what I do! Literally, this is sort of my job,” James reminded them. He had a point.

“Okay,” Albus sighed, as soon as James had returned home. “I think I’m finally mature enough to admit when I need to ask for help.”

Scorpius was grinning as he began clapping enthusiastically for his husband. Albus rolled his eyes, but Scorpius caught him smiling as he turned back to their breakfast.

“Now the only question is…who do we ask for help?” Scorpius wondered.

Albus cleanly cracked an egg and then glanced back at Scorpius. “If we ask your dad and not my parents, they’ll be insulted. If we ask my parents and not your dad, it’ll hurt his feelings. So. I guess all three grandparents.”

Scorpius had been thinking the same thing.

* * *

 

“ _This_ is your problem,” Ginny announced within three minutes of arriving at their flat. She weaved around Harry, Draco, and Gemma—who were all leaning over Lyra’s Moses basket and grinning down at her—and pointed at the schedule Scorpius had attached to the wall. “She’s waking so often because she’s hungry! You can’t follow traditional feeding rules with Weasley or Potter babies, you two. They need to eat every two hours on the dot or they turn into cross little dragons.”

Scorpius gaped. “But…but…all our newborn classes said three to four! Every one!”

“Which probably works for Corner or Crescent babies. But not for Potter babies. In fact, I’m pretty sure all my babies nursed every hour and a half those first few weeks.”

“Did not,” Albus said at once. It seemed a bit automatic.

“As if you’d remember,” Ginny scoffed. “You _did_ and you were an angry little thing when you didn’t. All you need is to feed her more often. Easy fix. You two go nap. Between the four of us, I think we’ve got it.”

Scorpius hesitated.

“She’s right,” Draco said. “Everything will be fine.”

“Everything will seem so much easier once you’ve had sleep,” Gemma chimed in, and Scorpius knew—as a medically trained professional—that what she was saying was true.

He turned and looked at his husband. He was already looking at him.

“What do you think?” Albus asked him quietly.

Scorpius studied Albus’s tired eyes. “I think we need some sleep,” he admitted.

“Me too.”

Albus and Scorpius gave their parents (and Gemma) five minutes’ worth of instruction on what to do and not to do when taking care of Lyra. They would’ve kept going, but Ginny and Harry all but pushed them from the room with orders to _calm down and relax._ Scorpius and Albus fell down onto their bed with multiple reservations, but their exhaustion didn’t leave much room to indulge it. Scorpius snuggled up to Albus, and within a few minutes, he was fast asleep.

* * *

 

Scorpius woke to the sound of laughter and conversation. It didn’t take him long to pick out Rose's and Iset’s voices.

“Oh no!” he cried. He sat straight up. His exclamation jolted Albus from his sleep; he sat up, alarmed.

“What?! What?! Is Lyra okay?! What’s wrong?!”

“She’s- I’m sure she’s fine, it’s just, we forgot about our friends! They’re here! And we’re sleeping!”

Albus collapsed back against the pillows. “That’s all? Scorpius, Iset won’t care, and Rose will get over it. I’m tired…”

“ _Al-bus_!” Scorpius complained. He scooted over and then threw his body down on top of Albus’s. Albus grunted. “Our friends are here. It’s time to get up. Lyra probably misses us.”

 _That_ got his attention. Within seconds, he was sitting up again, seemingly wide awake.

“Wait. How long have we been asleep?!” he demanded. “Our little girl!”

In a slightly delusional panic, he jumped out of the bed—still in his pants—and raced from the room. Scorpius didn’t have any chance to tell him to get dressed or remind him that their parents were watching over Lyra. Scorpius sighed, pulled on a set of sage-colored robes, grabbed trousers and a shirt for his husband, and then headed towards the sitting room, where all the commotion was coming from. When he entered, he spotted Hugo and Iset looking at some magazine or another on the sofa, Rose and Harry engaged in a deep discussion, Lily and Caden having what appeared to be an argument over a massive book called _2000 Timeless Names for Your Baby_ , and—finally—his nearly-undressed husband. He was heading back towards the bedrooms, Lyra alert and seemingly content in his arms. Scorpius held up the clothes he’d grabbed. Albus came to a stop in front of him. He grinned.

“If we weren’t already married, I’d propose again,” Albus greeted. He leaned in and kissed Scorpius. Scorpius gladly took their daughter from his arms so Albus could quickly dress.

“Hello, Lyra,” Scorpius greeted, his heart inflating wildly. He pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. She seemed incredibly comfortable and content wrapped up in her baby blanket. “Have your grandparents been good to you, pumpkin? I missed you. Did you miss Daddy and Papa? We always come back, don’t worry…”

He continued chatting sweetly to his daughter. He caught Albus looking at them with tender eyes a moment later, but as soon as he did, Albus quickly cleared his throat and pretended like he hadn’t noticed anything.

“So my mum and Gemma are in the kitchen with—wait for it—Professor Gantha,” Albus began.

Scorpius furrowed his brow. “Wait, sorry, what? Seriously?”

“Yes. Word of Lyra’s arrival got around the Hogwarts faculty quickly. She came by on my dad and Draco’s invitation and ended up staying for dinner. Can you believe we slept through that? Gantha here for dinner with our parents and Lily and my cousins and Iset?”

“We were _really_ tired,” Scorpius reminded Albus. He was thinking about his dreams again now that he knew Gantha was here. The vial dream he had at least three times a week now. The twins. He had seen those twins long before Lily was pregnant with them. What was happening to him? He was afraid and confused. He’d failed to have the proper follow-up with Gantha after telling her about his dreams so maybe she’d be annoyed with him and wouldn’t even want to help at all anymore. She had given him homework of sorts—he was supposed to write down every single dream he had the second after he woke. But things had gotten hectic with the upcoming birth of his first child and he’d failed to do that more than a couple times.

“My dad saved us some dinner,” Albus told him. “Are you hungry? Want me to warm up your plate?”

Scorpius hadn’t noticed his hunger until Albus said that. “Yeah, thanks!” He smiled down at Lyra. “I’m going to go visit with Lyra and our company.”

Albus reached down and patted Scorpius’s bum affectionately before walking off, leaving Scorpius standing there grinning stupidly. He really wanted to see Rose and Iset—he hadn’t seen them in nearly a month—but he was already feeling guilty for being away from Lyra for as long as he had. He took a few minutes to go back to the nursery and cuddle her close. He rocked her until she drifted back off to sleep, innocent and so bloody _precious_ , and then he spent a few minutes just looking at her. He gently stroked her downy hair and smiled at her itty nose. She certainly had his long, blonde eyelashes, and maybe even his eye shape, though it was difficult to tell. He already thought she was perfect and he knew his love would only grow in the coming days. Already there wasn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for her. He couldn’t wait for the days to come. He couldn’t wait to share his life with her.

He figured she’d had loads of excitement while he and Albus were asleep, so he settled her down in the nursery cot for a break from the Potter chaos. He cast a Monitor spell so he could hear everything that went on in her nursery and then headed back towards the living room. He was beaming as he fell down onto the sofa beside Iset. He held his arms out. She was laughing as she leaned into his embrace and hugged him back.

“Albus and I missed you! Albus made a _massive_ chocolate cake the other night and our cake eating partner was gone!” Scorpius lamented. “We ended up having to throw some of it away!”

“Oh no! You should freeze it next time; Albus’s cake should _never_ be thrown away! Though Rose and I haven’t been living up to our seventh year Cake Eating Champions name lately.”

Scorpius arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

She nodded solemnly and looked over at Hugo.

“I’m making them taste _everything_ that Aster and I consider having at our wedding,” Hugo supplied.

“Rose and I had thirty-three truffles this morning,” Iset admitted.

“Oh, wow!” Scorpius said, horrified. “That’s…a lot. I don’t even think Albus could do that, but if you need somebody to step in for you, I’m sure he’d give it a good go. And there’s always James…”

“Oh, we couldn’t ask James,” Hugo said. “Sugar addicts should stay out of bakeries.”

“Fair,” Scorpius agreed. “So how was the Child Welfare conference?”

Iset’s smile faded for the first time since he’d greeted her. “It was…upsetting. But it was important and I’m glad I was able to tag along.”

Scorpius smelled Albus’s soap before he spotted him. He approached from behind the sofa. He leaned over it and hugged Iset’s shoulders; she jumped slightly and reached up to pat his arms, taken aback by his sudden appearance.

“Rose didn’t drive you too mad?” Albus asked.

“No…just the right amount,” she said. Albus snickered and nudged her shoulder teasingly.

Rose had finally finished her conversation with Harry. She joined their group by falling down into Iset’s lap.

“Lyra’s adorable. I was right about the hair shade,” Rose greeted them. She reached out and lightly punched Albus’s arm. “You’re a dad, Albus! Merlin, we’re getting _old_.”

“Some of us wear it better than others,” Albus quipped. Rose smacked him again.

Scorpius avoided the kitchen for as long as he could. And thankfully, there were plenty of distractions to keep him in the living room. Hermione arrived only a few minutes later, presumably having just finished with a meeting. She tumbled from the living room Floo, greeted Albus and Scorpius, and then marched determinedly over to the sofa, where Lily looked seconds away from beating Caden over the head with a baby name book.

“Hello,” Hermione greeted, and then she dropped a book down into Lily’s lap. Lily looked extremely offended by its sudden presence. Caden reached for it.

“ _The Ultimate Guide to Parenting: How to Raise Confident, Responsible, and Kind Children._ ” He glanced up at Hermione skeptically. “Hmm.”

Hermione only had one thing to say: “Please, for the love of Merlin and all the muggle Gods, _read the book, Lily_.”

With that, she turned and marched into the kitchen, almost certainly to find Ginny and Harry.

“Ah, look here, Lily,” Scorpius heard Caden say. “This author’s name is Heath!”

Lily snapped. Scorpius knew it was coming right before it did, but that didn’t stop him from jumping when she stood (much more abruptly he would’ve expected with her massive stomach), spun around to face Caden, and pointed at him threateningly.

“Say _one more word_ about that _awful name_ and I will steal a time turner from Scorpius’s dad, go back in time, and un-fuck you!” she took a few steps forward, as if to storm off, and then thought of something else. She turned back around. “And I will take Big Boy with _me_!”

With that, she swung her hair over her shoulder and started to walk off, much more vexed than Scorpius had ever seen somebody be over the word ‘Heath’.

“Big Boy would probably choose _me_ to go with anyway,” Caden said, entirely unaffected by Lily’s apparent rage. His words made her pause in place. She was still standing right behind the sofa, and Scorpius halfway expected her to reach over it and smack him. But to Scorpius’s genuine surprise, she leaned over the back of the sofa (as much as she could), looped her arms around Caden’s neck, and pressed a fiercely affectionate kiss to his cheek. Going by Caden’s smile, he _had_ expected that response from her.

Scorpius heard her mutter something to Caden that he couldn’t quite decipher, but he was certain it probably involved swearing. That was always a safe bet to make.

“Agreed,” Caden said vaguely. Everybody in the room knew better than to ask. Scorpius exchanged a _look_ with Albus. He had never understood Lily or her relationship dynamic, but he had a feeling that—if she were staying at their flat tonight and if it _was_ banter—that they ought to cast a pre-emptive silencing charm on her room…just in case.

Scorpius’s avoidance of the kitchen (and therefore Gantha) was ultimately ended when Gantha entered the living room herself.

“Scorpius! Albus! Congratulations,” she told them warmly. She walked over and sat down on the sofa beside Albus. “Lyra is healthy and bright and she’s going to make you so very, very proud.”

Scorpius didn’t feel as if she was really predicting anything; he was already certain of that without needing to see the future.

“Scorpius,” Gantha began. “Do you have your dream journal on hand? I’ve been thinking about what you told me and—”

“HEY! _YOU_!”

Lily seemed to have only just noticed that Professor Gantha was in Albus and Scorpius’s flat. She looked up from the baby name book she and Caden had resumed perusing and squinted at Gantha from behind her glasses. Scorpius guessed Gantha had yet to venture from the kitchen and Lily must’ve arrived after her, leaving her unaware of the professor’s presence until that moment.

“What?! I haven’t even suggested a name yet!” Caden said.  

“Not you, Caden!” Lily responded impatiently. Lily rose to her feet with significant struggle. She gripped her pregnant belly once she was standing and narrowed her eyes at Gantha. “You have _so much_ explaining to do, Professor Gantha! So much!”

Gantha didn’t look startled in the slightest by Lily’s pregnant state. “Hello, Ms. Potter. How are you today?”

“Fucking _hugely pregnant!_ You told me I wasn’t having kids! Remember that?! _Hmmm_?! We were all grouped together in the Great Hall after all those bloody dementors attacked the school and you offered to do our fortunes and you told _me_ —”

“Come and sit,” Gantha interrupted her. She patted the open space to her left. “Sit and think and I believe the memories will come back to you. You’ll remember that I said no such thing.”

Lily didn’t sit. “Yes, you did! You _absolutely_ did! Scorpius, you heard her, right?! Caden, I’m right, tell her that I’m right! Remember when those dementors came into Hogwarts when we were thirteen—”

“I think I was fourteen by then, but carry on.”

Lily spared him a glower. “Gantha was sort of tipsy and offered to do our fortunes? And she told me that I’d never have kids?”

Caden furrowed his brow. He looked at Gantha. “I don’t remember her saying that, but I do remember her saying you’d live the longest out of all your family members. And…something about a…fire….” He trailed off, an odd look gracing his features. After a beat, he turned to face Gantha fully. “Professor, was that the fire at the dragon sanctuary? The one that burnt Lily so badly she nearly died? Was it that one that you saw?”

Scorpius saw sadness creep in behind Gantha’s eyes. “Yes. Though, of course, I never know the specifics. I had no idea that…well, Harry told me about the baby dragons. I had no idea that they died. I didn’t see that part in my initial vision.”

Lily’s expression twisted with displeasure. For a second, Scorpius feared she’d scream at Gantha and blame her for not warning her ahead of time (so she could’ve saved the babies.) But after a red-faced moment of effort, she managed to withhold those cutting comments. “You told me I wouldn’t raise any kids,” she persisted instead. “I remember ‘cause you said I’d have a baby girl, and I said ‘what the fuck, no I’m not’, and then you said ‘you’re right, you’re not’, and then you said I was powerful—”

“Think very carefully. That’s not what I said at all. Close your eyes and think about the Great Hall that night. It smelt of slightly melted chocolate and smoke. The owls were hooting in the distance. It was incredibly warm because of the number of people…you were sitting right beside Caden…the sleeping bags you were given were a soft, worn cotton…”

Whatever she was doing was working on Scorpius. His eyes had fallen shut. For a moment, he felt a rush as the memory overcame him. He could clearly feel Albus’s side pressed against his. He felt the way his own face had surged with blood in embarrassment when Gantha had said _Lyra_. He could _smell_ the residual smoke from Roxanne and George’s firework show. He felt the way the air shifted near his ear as a random owl swooped down over his head. And he wasn’t the one meant to be remembering, but he heard Gantha’s words to Albus, as clear as day: “I see a double path, a three-room flat, a moment of great joy…Oh, a little one—Lyra, as bright as the constellation she’s named for—”

And she was. She was bright. Bright as the constellation, their daughter…

“Why the hell did everybody close their eyes?” Lily demanded impatiently. “Wake up! Tell me what you said then if you didn’t say what I remember you very clearly saying!”

“She didn’t actually say anything,” Caden said suddenly. Scorpius reluctantly opened his eyes, pulling his mind from the induced memory. Caden was looking at Gantha. “She said something about a baby girl and ‘a labor of love’…meaning, I guess, Lyra?”

Lily didn’t give Gantha any time to respond. Her face had paled magnificently. It was a bit startling because she’d just been pink-cheeked with frustration only moments ago. Her hands dropped to her stomach protectively. “A baby girl? _Just_ a baby girl? What do you mean? What happens to the boy? Is something wrong with him? Is something wrong with the boy?”

The edge of genuine panic in her voice took Scorpius off guard. He hadn’t seen her express much affection for the babies yet, so he was surprised by the depth of her concern.

“That’s not what she was saying…right? Right, Professor?” asked Caden. He was clearly attempting to remain calm, but there was a sharp edge of panic to his words as well. Gantha quickly reassured them.

“I was speaking of Lyra. Don’t worry. Nothing is wrong with your boy. And if you had attempted to recall that night, Lily, you’d remember that I never said you weren’t having kids. I simply pointed out that I _never_ made a comment on you raising a child. And…clearly…you don’t raise a child. You raise _children_.”

Lily blinked. “You sneaky little—”

“Lily,” Harry interrupted, his tone bored. “Language.”

Gantha patted the space beside her again. Lily relented this time. Scorpius wouldn’t have been surprised if Gantha’s deceptive wordplay was impressive to his sister-in-law.

“What was all the yelling about a moment ago?” Gantha asked Lily. She looked between the young couple. “Name indecision?”

“Wow, I wonder if her third eye got that from the baby name book in Caden’s lap?” Scorpius heard Hermione hiss to Ginny and Harry. The three muffled snickers into their hands.

“I don’t like Heath,” Lily said shortly.

Gantha studied her for a moment. “Well, it’s difficult to find something that fits perfectly with Iris. The two need to sound complete--like they belong together-- but in their own distinct ways, right?”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “Who told you our daughter’s name?”

“Who didn’t tell me? Have you two been fretting about the boy’s name for some time now?”

“It’s much harder than we expected,” Caden admitted.

“Would you like some help from the universe?”

“What _sort_ of help?” asked Lily skeptically.

In response, Gantha withdrew a crystal ball from her cloak pocket. From the echoing sounds as she removed it, she had many other large objects in there, too. She held the crystal ball up.

“I’ll find the page number. When you look at the page, you’ll know. A little helping hand is not cosmic cheating.”

“I don’t really know what you mean, but whatever. What do you think, Caden?”

He shrugged. “Sure, sounds cool.”

“Okay…” Gantha hovered her hands over the crystal ball. It immediately began swirling more incessantly; the grey clouds within the glass turned periwinkle. “Okay…are you ready?”

“Ready.”

“77.”

Scorpius watched with interest as the couple leaned over the book together and found the indicated page. They were quiet for a couple seconds as they scanned the page, and then…

“Elliot,” Caden said. He looked up from the page and glanced at Lily, but she was still staring hard at the names on page 77 from behind her glasses. He looked at Gantha and smiled. “Elliot. I really, really like that."

“Of course you do,” she said airily. “It’s fate. Ms. Potter?"”

Lily hesitated, her eyes still on the page. She finally looked up at Caden.

“I…don’t…hate it,” she realized. She perked up after that. She grinned; her hand fell down to rest atop her stomach. “Hey! Caden! I don’t hate it! This is the first name suggestion I don’t hate! In fact…Iris and Elliot…Elliot and Iris…I _think_ I like it!”

They reached up and gave each other a worryingly hard high five. The sound echoed throughout the room. Scorpius was certain their hands would be red for a while.

“Brilliant! That’s one thing off the list. I think this calls for a celebration.”

“You read my fucking mind. Let’s get out of here. Bye, everybody!!”

As soon as they were gone, Rose asked a question that was also weighing on Scorpius’s mind.

“Are you _supposed_ to do that?” Rose asked bossily. “I thought Seers were absolutely forbidden from influencing the present with knowledge of the future.”

Gantha blinked. “Oh, I didn’t really see the future. Sorry, I thought most everybody realized that. I just picked a random number.”

“Er—sorry?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. I was born in ’77. I knew they just needed a little push—they were being extremely picky and judgmental. If you tell somebody they’ll love something, they love it. It’s all perfectly permitted by the Seer Committee.”

Ginny walked over to the sofa Caden had just vacated and lifted the baby name book up.

“Oh, that’s just brilliant!" she said sarcastically. She dropped the book down onto the sofa. "What if they had picked _Edgar_?! That’s on this page!”

“Well, I knew they’d only pick one they genuinely did like from the page itself. Sometimes people just need to be a bit more confident in themselves. The surety of the future provides that.”

Scorpius wasn’t sure what to say, and he was worried that Gantha would ask him about his failed homework, so when he heard Lyra begin crying (the sound emitting from his wand thanks to the Monitoring spell), he jumped at the chance to go tend to her. He changed her nappy, read two books to her just because he knew babies liked the sound of their parents’ voices, and then he snuck into the kitchen with her. His dad and Gemma were tucked away in there, looking rather cozy sitting in two chairs pushed flush against each other, Draco’s arm around Gemma. Scorpius paused in the doorway and considered leaving before they saw him, but the sight of the contented smile on his dad’s face made _him_ smile, and he decided there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

“Gemma,” he greeted. He walked over and sat across from them. He shifted Lyra to his other arm and met his dad’s girlfriend’s eyes. She always listened so intently any time he spoke to her; Scorpius wondered if there was something in particular that she was waiting for him to say. He wondered if he was about to say it. “Thank you for helping with Lyra today. She’s so lucky to have you two. She’s so lucky to have two really brilliant grandparents.”

Gemma’s eyes widened slightly. Her smile was gradual, yet once it was in place, Scorpius felt like something very important had just transpired within the space of that small kitchen. He had never before let himself admit how fond he was growing of her. He had told his dad on a few occasions—during slightly awkward and forced conversations—that he approved of her and that he was okay with his dad dating again, but he had never claimed Gemma as part of the family in any way. It seemed right to do it now. Lyra grew their family and brought forth new connections to be made: why should it stop there?

“You and Astoria did a wonderful job raising him, Draco,” Gemma said. “Scorpius, you’re truly one of a kind.”

Later, after everybody had left, and it was just him, Lyra, and Albus again, he _felt_ like one of a kind. He and Albus were back in their element; they weren’t as frightened as they’d been the night prior, and with a solid game plan in place for the nights ahead, Scorpius felt much more confident. As he and Albus took turns waking in the night to change and feed Lyra and then cuddle her back to sleep, he truly did feel like they were _both_ one of a kind—one of a kind dads.

It was Albus’s turn when Lyra woke around dawn, and even though Scorpius was allowed to keep on sleeping, he found himself listening in instead.

“Aww, that’s a sweet girl, it’s okay,” Albus cooed. Scorpius had never heard his voice quite so gentle and soft. It made Scorpius’s heart skip two beats with emotion. “Give us a cuddle, there we go…no need to cry…your dads love you and we’re always going to be here when you’re upset or frightened…it’s okay…”

Lyra settled down remarkably quickly. Scorpius rolled over onto his side to face Albus’s side of the bed, and when he opened his eyes, he saw Albus had settled Lyra onto his chest to sleep. She really did seem to get comfort from the beating of their hearts and the warmth of their skin. James and Nora—who had stopped by the flat a few minutes before everybody left for the night to officially show off baby Benji—affirmed that all their babies had been the same way, too.

“Even my weird heart comforts you, doesn’t it, Lyra?” Albus realized, his voice full of wonder. “You don’t care that it’s not quite right. You don’t care that I’m not perfect. You’re just glad to be held. Is that a baby thing? Or is that something you got from your papa? He never cared that I’m weird, either.” Scorpius watched as Albus gently kissed Lyra’s hair. “I hope it’s something you got from your papa. I hope you got a lot of things from him.”

Lyra was already drifting off to sleep. Scorpius’s heart was full of love for his little family, and he wanted to talk to Albus about what he’d said—he wanted to tell him that he wished every single day for Lyra to be like Albus—but he knew it would embarrass him. Instead, he scooted over towards Albus and snuggled up to his side. He kissed his shoulder and reached up, gently stroking the back of Lyra’s curled up hand. And he realized that this was probably the happiest he had _ever_ felt (and he had a genuinely happy life). Lying there with his husband, his husband that he loved and felt so loved by in return, their little daughter sleeping contently and safely, her entire brilliant future just waiting for them all…he couldn’t imagine how it could get any better than that.

That night, he dreamt of those vials again. But for the first time he could remember, he had all the missing tops stored safely in his pockets, right at his fingertips.  


	15. II. Sea of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily frets about the future while Caden's preoccupied with the past. Nora and Lily struggle to close open doors without slamming them on themselves. Harry and Caden find some common ground. Little Lyra makes a new friend. And Ginny and Harry find the perfect gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so much for the kind and supportive comments last chapter. I'm hoping to get some replying done tomorrow. Thanks again and thanks for reading!

_She was standing in the ocean, and it was her ocean (but it wasn’t), and in her arms, she held two babies._

_She was camping with her family on the beach. The sun was sinking beneath the waves. Caden, her father, and her mother were gone, and she knew they were mountain climbing, but she wasn’t worried. Her brothers had been there, but she wasn’t sure where they were now. She held her babies and walked down the beach, her feet sinking further and further into the wet sand with every step she took. As the sun buried itself beneath the waves, she lowered the babies into the cot she’d dug in the sand. The edges were decorated with bright bits of sea glass. She draped a blanket over them for warmth. She felt a hand against her shoulder, and when she turned, Delphi was standing there, Evangeline perched on her shoulder. Her bright feathers seemed to glow in the dim light of dusk._

_“It’s a perfect cot,” Delphi told her. “It radiates the warmth from the earth’s core.”_

_Lily felt frightened, though she wasn’t sure why. It was a creeping feeling up her spine. She suddenly felt like she didn’t want to leave the babies in the cot; she felt like she wanted to bring them into her tent with her. She looked back at the sand. She could no longer see the actual cot, only the hazy glow of moonlight reflected in the surrounding sea glass.The babies were not crying._

_“I changed my mind,” she said aloud, and when she turned back around, Rose was there. She was holding The Ultimate Guide to Parenting: How to Raise Confident, Responsible, and Kind Children open in her hands. _

_“You can’t change your mind. They have to stay there. They’ll freeze in the tent. It’s here, on page 77, see?”_

_She held the book out to Lily, but it was dark, and she realized now that she didn’t have her glasses on. The words blurred—the landscape blurred. She patted her pockets frantically. Her heart squeezed in on itself. She found it difficult to breathe._

_“Where are my glasses?” she asked. She could hear the fearful hitch in her words. “Rose, do you know where I put my glasses?”_

_She stuck her hands into her coat pockets and turned them out. She pulled her coat off. She wasn’t wearing a shirt beneath it. The cold night air sent a shiver down her back as it touched her bare chest. She reached up and crossed her arms over her breasts, her cheeks burning in embarrassment._

_“Lily,” Rose scoffed. “You can’t go camping naked. I’m going to tell your mum.”_

_“I left my glasses,” Lily said. She squeezed her arms around herself. She could feel tears burning behind her useless eyes. “I left my glasses. I have to go home and get them.”_

_Delphi reached forward and pulled the coat from Lily’s arms._

_“Evangeline needs this,” she said. Lily watched her swaddle the parrot in her leather coat. Delphi cradled the bird in her arms a moment later._

_“I’m going to get my glasses,” Lily told them. She was trembling, though she wasn't sure if it was from the cold air or fear. “Tell my parents and Caden where I went. I’m taking the babies and I’ll be back. I need my glasses.”_

_“No,” Rose repeated. “You have to leave them there. It’s right here on this page. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”_

_Lily felt frustrated tears working their way to the surface. She dropped her arms from her chest. She blinked rapidly against her tears._

_“No,” she said, but her voice sounded feeble. “No, I don’t think I should leave them.”_

_“It’s what you have to do. You’re a mum.”_

_“No. No, I—I don’t want to—”_

_“It’s not about what you want,” Rose said, and then she shuffled through the pages again. She held up the blurry book. “See?”_

_“I can’t read that! I can’t fucking read it; I don’t have my glasses!” Lily screamed._

_At the sound of her raised voice, she heard her babies begin to cry. She turned around towards the sound, but because her vision was so poor, she could no longer see the moonlight shining off the sea glass. She couldn’t see the spot they were at. She surveyed the dark expanse of sand and sea in front of her. She felt like fists were squeezing her lungs._

_“Rose—I can’t see—where are they?!”_

_“You’re supposed to let them sleep as long as they need to.”_

_“I can’t—I can’t see—they aren’t sleeping!” She began gasping. Deep, painful spasms in her chest, shallow gasps of air, vertigo that made it difficult to walk straight. She set off in the direction she thought they were and she walked and she walked. She couldn’t hear crying anymore. She turned around to ask Rose to help her, but when she did, she realized she’d walked so far out from the camp site that she could hardly see the torches burning outside their tents. Salt water was up to her ankles. It burned her skin so badly that she cried out; when she looked down, she saw new tattoos covering her ankles and calves. Thorns and dry, brittle branches snaked up her legs towards her pelvis. The salt water seared the fresh tattoos, but she couldn’t stop walking, because if the water was up to her ankles, maybe it was filling the hole, and maybe they couldn’t breathe, and she had to find them but she couldn’t see and she was alone and when she looked behind her the lanterns seemed farther and farther away—_

_“Lil! There you are!”_

_She began crying at the sound of his voice. She turned around and took burning steps towards her boyfriend. He was weighed down with ropes from rock climbing, but he was smiling at her, and his arms wrapped tightly around her as she threw herself into his embrace._

_“I can’t find them!” she gasped. Her bare chest pressed against his as he cradled her to his chest. Her heart was beating so fiercely that she was certain he could feel it. “I put them in the cot and I don’t have my glasses! I don’t know where they are!”_

_Her heart rate kept increasing and increasing. She felt lightheaded; she swayed on her feet, and she certainly would’ve passed out if it weren’t for his arms around her. Nausea left her feeling even more breathless. She could hardly bear to stand up. So when her boyfriend abruptly took a large step back, leaving her swaying unsteadily in the sand, she felt her legs fold beneath her. She landed hard on the wet sand. Salt water splashed up and got into her eyes. Her limited vision swam and extinguished completely. Where she had once seen blurred shapes and light, she saw nothing but darkness. She had never felt more frightened._

_“You lost them? What the fuck do you mean?! Where are they?!”_

_“I put them in the cot like the book said—”_

_“Why did you listen to the book?! They’re babies! They’re just babies! How could you leave them?! How could you forget your glasses_ again _?!”_

_“I—I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t fucking know, I don’t know!”_

_And then, with words full of such horror and hatred that Lily felt sick, he said: “You killed them. You killed them.”_

_“No,” she gasped. “No, they’re fine, they’re just—”_

_“I will never forgive you.”_

_She heard the water splash as he took a step. She realized he was walking off. She couldn’t see. She didn’t know how to get back. And she knew the babies were alive because she could hear them crying in the distance, and nobody would listen—not even him—and she couldn’t find them if she couldn’t see or even find her own way home._

_“Don’t go,” she begged. “I can’t see!”_

_“I don’t care.”_

_“We have to find them! I can hear them! I can fucking hear them, don’t walk away! Don’t go away!”_

_“There is no ‘we’. There is no family.”_

_Lily’s sobs were so deep and aching that she could feel them straining her stomach muscles. “Where is my dad?! Where’s my mum?! I want them! Where are they?!”_

_But she didn’t hear anything. She shouted his name, but the sound of the rising tide drowned her words. The water kept creeping in. The babies' cries sounded very far now. She was alone and she couldn’t see and—_

The painful sensation of sharp claws flexing into her stomach yanked her from her nightmare. She was quivering and so totally drenched in sweat that her shirt was sticking to her skin; her instinct upon waking was to reach down and smack at whatever was on her body. Her hand had barely touched fur before she heard a low hiss. She saw the blurry outline of one of her mum’s cats as it leapt from her stomach, narrowly avoiding her smacking hand. She was confused and disoriented, her heart still heavy with fear and grief and her cheeks damp with tears, but reality slowly sank back in. She was at the Den. She was back in England. She was in her childhood bedroom. The sharp claws belonged to one of her mum’s new cats, Miro, who had a creepy obsession with Lily’s pregnant belly. _My belly_ , she thought, a wave of relief washing over her. She pressed her palms flat against the sweat-soaked sheets and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She could see the hazy outline of her stomach, and she wasn't sure if her relief was from the realization that she was still pregnant (and her babies were still here and not lost in an open grave) or from the realization that she could see again, but it was strong enough to render her momentarily breathless. She was no longer crying—and maybe she hadn’t ever been, maybe the wetness on her cheeks was from sweat, there was no way to know for certain—but she couldn’t seem to stop shaking. The images from her nightmare were so vivid and fresh in her mind that she couldn’t stop replaying them. So when she heard Caden stir to her left and felt his hand reach out to settle on her thigh, she jumped.

“What is it?” he asked sleepily. His hand slipped from her thigh and landed on the damp bedding. There was a pause, and she couldn’t look at him, but she could tell he’d sat up slightly from the shift in the bed. “Okay. I’m not being funny. But did you piss the bed?”

Ordinarily, she would’ve smacked him or wrestled him to the mattress for even asking that. But she was still shaking and she felt extremely upset.

“No, I didn’t _piss the bed_ ,” she managed to scoff. She felt the bed shift as he scooted over towards her. He reached out and pulled her into his arms; she felt her body relax into his embrace. Her heart rate began to settle. A second later, he groaned.

“Eugh, Lily, you’re drenched in sweat,” he muttered. “That is not a nice smell.”

She aimed a light kick at his shin. “Shut it. I’m pregnant with twins.”

There wasn’t much he could ever say back to that. And she must not have smelled _that_ repulsive because he didn’t drop his arms from around her.

“Are you feeling all right?” he yawned.

“Yeah, I am now,” she decided. She felt her heart jump as one of the babies kicked and another made a squirmy movement. Weirdly, it made her feel even better. She lowered a hand to her stomach and rubbed her skin. “I had a nightmare. If you tease me, I won’t have sex with you for three entire days.”

He tried to whistle lowly but it didn’t quite happen (probably because he was still half-asleep.) “Wow. Three entire days. You’re serious, then.”

She reached down and lightly pinched his side. He did the same right back, but it only tickled.

“I’m not going to tease you. It must’ve been really fucking terrifying. Even your hair is wet.”

His voice was genuinely devoid of all mocking, even the jesting kind. Lily felt her eyes burn. The specific memories of her dream were fading, but she could still remember the terror she’d felt. “It was. I lost our babies. And you were so mad at me. You left me in the ocean and I was blind and our babies were lost in a cot buried in the sand.”

He was speechless for a few long, painful moments. “Fucking hell,” he finally said. He leaned in and pressed a firm kiss to her lips. Lily reached up and tightened her arms around him. “Why were you blind?” he wondered.

“Because salt water got into my eyes. Don’t question it, nothing made much sense. Delphi swaddled Evangeline like a baby.”

“Doesn’t have to make sense to be terrifying,” he reassured her. She relaxed into his embrace even more as his fingers moved to stroke through her hair. “I wouldn’t ever leave you blind in the ocean.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, Caden, it was a _nightmare_ ,” she reminded him.

He leaned in and kissed her hair. He sniffed loudly a second later. “You smell _really sweaty_ ,” he said again.

She leaned down and sniffed her own arm. “Yeah, all right, point made. Let’s have a shower.”

“What? Right now? What if your parents wake up?”

“What if they do? It’s not like they didn’t bathe together fairly obviously my entire childhood. Serves them right,” Lily muttered.

“Yeah, you and your siblings _do_ have loads of horror stories…” he shrugged. “All right.”

The shower was more refreshing in theory than it ended up being in reality. She was still forgetting to calculate her massive stomach into the equation and hadn’t expected to take up as much space as she did. After knocking into each other over and over, accidentally getting soap into each other’s eyes, and Lily whacking her stomach so hard against the shower door handle that it brought tears to her eyes, they rinsed and gave up on that particular indulgence.

Lily sat on the edge of her bed in her knickers, her wet hair dripping down her back, and leaned back against her hands as Caden applied bruise cream to the front of her belly.

“Do you think we should Floo Scorpius about you hitting your stomach?” he wondered. He finished rubbing the cream in and moved to sit beside her. Lily felt her heart jump as the babies moved (one kicking and one making those weird squirmy movements again). It was almost like they were answering his question. She grabbed his hand and moved it back to her stomach.

“Nah, they’re moving about. Can you feel that?”

“No,” he said. He sounded a bit disappointed. Lily was beginning to feel that way, too. The twins seemed to move more and more each day, but he still couldn’t feel their movements from the outside, and she wanted to share it with him.

“Well, they’re fine, anyway,” she sighed.

She and Caden changed the bedding and then crawled under the covers, warm and clean and content. Lily was feeling so much better; she could hardly remember her nightmare now. She had only had two other nightmares in her entire life as bad as the one she'd just had, so she was hopeful that it had been a one-time thing.

* * *

 

It wasn’t. She woke at dawn to Caden gently shaking her awake, her entire body trembling and her cheeks damp again. She was disoriented as she stared up into his concerned eyes.

“Lily,” he whispered. “You were crying.”

She thought about her nightmare (a burning building, her babies, him, Big Boy, Opal.) She shuddered.

“Another fucking nightmare,” she bit uneasily. She felt embarrassed. She shoved the blanket off her, sat up, and ran a shaky hand through her hair. “ _Fuck_.”

Despite the fact that she’d seemingly had a decent amount of sleep, she felt incredibly exhausted and grumpy the entire morning. She was so upset to find her dad making sausages for breakfast—when he knew she wouldn’t eat them; she didn’t eat sausages—that she stormed from the house and hid in the garden shed. She felt like one wrong word from somebody would send her into a sobbing fit for no reason at all, so for that reason, she didn’t want to be around anybody until she calmed down.

“Hey,” she heard, around fifteen minutes after she’d hidden away in the shed. She looked up. Caden eyed her carefully. “I’m just bringing you something to eat. Hunger is only going to make you feel worse.”

“I’m not even hungry,” she said stubbornly. Her stomach growled audibly. Caden’s lips twitched. “Oh, shut up.”

He entered the shed. Lily looked down at her knees and sniffed as he fell down beside her on the sofa. He reached over and slid a plate into her lap. Lily sniffed again. An apple and banana cut up with the pieces arranged to make a smiley face. One of her dad’s specialties. He’d even sprinkled cinnamon at the top to make hair.

“I didn’t tell them you had nightmares last night, so they just think you’re an insane pregnant lady,” Caden said. Lily picked up a slice of apple from the place, ran it through the trail of cinnamon, and popped it in her mouth. Thankfully, the taste of both still sat well with her.

“I sort of am,” she muttered. “An insane pregnant lady.”

He set his arm around her shoulders. “Well, you’re insane all the time, really. But I think the pregnancy _does_ add a particular flair.”

Lily wasn’t even in the mood to banter. “My dreams were really, really, really, _really_ horrible,” she said miserably.

He relaxed against the back of the sofa and dragged her into his embrace. She set her plate down on the space beside him and wrapped her arms around his middle. She didn’t know when she’d decided that being coddled was so nice—it had happened at some point during this pregnancy, she knew _that_ —but she wasn’t going to try and fight it to save face after the night she’d had.

“It’s okay to not be okay, you know,” he reminded her.

“It wasn’t real, though. So I should be over it now, ‘cause I’m awake, and it wasn’t real.”

“The way it made you feel was still real.”

He had a point. Lily wasn’t exactly sure what was eating at her so much, but she knew it was probably whatever suppressed fears had led to the disturbing dreams she’d had in the first place. She had _never_ been good at dream interpretation; Gantha told her she was too ‘fixed in the present’ to ‘contemplate the complexities of dreams’—something Lily always felt was a veiled insult—but she knew that both her nightmares had featured, in one way or another, her being the cause of the babies’ deaths. And she knew, in each dream, that her poor parenting had resulted in losing Caden, too. Those two fears weren’t exactly surprising, but they were disappointing because she had thought she was doing much better on both fronts.

“I think I’m really scared,” she heard herself say, her voice small. As soon as the words came out, a swell of panic overtook her. She’d been fighting back the feeling since she’d held Lyra. Meeting her and then watching Albus and Scorpius take care of her—and realizing how wholly _delicate_ and _needy_ newborns were—had opened up her insecurities again. That little voice was back: _What if I can’t do it? It’s too late to turn back now. But what if I can’t do it?_

“It’s got to be normal to feel that way,” he told her softly. “This is…a lot. You know,” he gestured vaguely at her stomach.

“I just—I don’t want—” there were so many things that she didn’t want to happen. Where did she start? “I don’t want to mess this up. And I'm really scared about how difficult this is going to be. Not only having newborns but the rest of this pregnancy, too.” She decided to give herself the freedom to complain freely; he always said he wanted her to be open, so he could see what that _really_ meant, then. “I can’t even be on top well anymore—not like I want to be—and _you_ certainly can’t be either, and that’s really annoying and frustrating because now our entire sex life has changed and it’s not _bad_ by any means, but it’s not the _same_. It’s all ‘making love’ and less, y'know, rough fucking. And I _like_ the roughness. I’ve got _months_ left of this, months where I’ll be even _bigger_ , and I’m freaking out.”

He shifted to face her. “Is our sex life really the biggest concern right now?”

“Yes! It is! Because that is something I like to do and thinking I won't be able to do it at all anymore frightens me. It makes me think of all the other things I love to do that I won’t be able to do later on. And _now_ I’m worried that I’ll start having nightmares every night and I won’t even be able to _sleep_ properly.”

She was feeling quite mopey. It felt nice to voice her built up grievances, but she thought there was no solution to any of them, so she wasn’t sure she felt much better. She crossed her arms over her stomach and slouched down. He reached out and brushed her hair back from her neck. His fingertips lingered against her collarbones.

“Would you like me to fuck you in the shed? Will that make you feel better?”

She genuinely considered the offer. “Only if you’re going to be normal and not all…gentle and stuff. It’s okay every now and then—the sentimental love-making bit-- and I do like it when I'm in that sort of mood, and sex with you is never unenjoyable but I just…I guess I just miss being in control of my body. I miss being able to do whatever I want. I’m really into that, you know—doing whatever I want. I guess there’s no point in complaining.”

“There’s always a point in complaining. Now I know how you feel and now we can figure it out. But it’s difficult for me, too, you know. I just can't get myself get to be as rough anymore. Do you know how scary it is worrying that I could hurt you or the babies?”

She nodded. “Pretty scary I guess since you love us and whatever.”

“Yeah. Sort of a mood killer, thinking that you could _really_ hurt your pregnant girlfriend.”

She hadn’t really considered it from his point of view before. “I didn’t think about that.”

He reached down and lightly patted her belly. “You won’t be pregnant forever. We really only have a little over three months left, if even that. We’ve gone longer than that without any sex at all before, back when we were long-distance.”

“Yeah, but during those times I could take up another active hobby to burn off my frustration. I became a muggle long-distance runner for a spell, remember? What am I meant to take up now? Knitting?”

He pursed his lips together against laughter. “It can be a very active sport if you believe in yourself.”

She shoved him hard, but he tensed his muscles and resisted the pressure, leading to him hardly moving an inch.

“Nice try.”

Lily lifted a clenched fist. “Let me catch you off guard and we’ll see who’s laughing.”

“Gladly.”

Thankfully, she could still snog the smile from his face; that was still in her range of abilities. And she thoroughly, _thoroughly_ enjoyed it.

* * *

 

“I don’t know about this.”

“You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to. I’ll just tell everybody that you’re not feeling well. But they’re going to find out eventually,” Caden reminded her.

She hovered uncertainly in front of the Floo. “We have a family lunch in only two hours.”

“I wasn’t planning on staying at the Three Broomsticks for longer than one. Pierce sounded like he was in a foul mood.”

Lily bit her lip. “I can’t even drink. It’s sort of sad to go to a pub when you can’t even drink.”

“I won’t drink either so you’re not the only one abstaining.”

She heaved a sigh. She hadn’t seen any of her Hogwarts friends except Aster since returning back to England, but she wasn’t sure what to expect from them. She had no idea how they’d react to her startling news. If Aster and Hugo were going, that’d be one thing, but they were out of town for the week with Aster’s parents, Lily’s grandparents, Aunt Hermione, and Uncle Ron to visit various shops in preparation for the wedding. So she’d only have Caden for backup, and he often tried to avoid conflicts in the friend group rather than confronting the more annoying members (Zabini.)

“Okay, I’ll go,” she decided. “But promise you won’t let any of them touch my stomach. Because if they do, I’m probably going to kill them, and then you’ll have to also kill somebody so you can be in Azkaban too, and then our children will have to grow up in prison.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her into the fireplace. “I’ll do my best to keep that from happening.”

She was—unsurprisingly—greeted with chaos. Saul choked on his firewhisky and spat it across the table, hitting Emi in the eye (which definitely hurt going by her alarmed shrieking). Claire tripped on her walk back from the toilets and fell across Avery’s lap. Zabini jumped up from his seat and ran over to punch Caden enthusiastically in the shoulder as if congratulating him for having functioning sperm or just having sex in general (or something equally weird and vaguely annoying), and Jillian collapsed into laughter as if she’d never seen anything more entertaining in her entire life.

Both Caden and Lily zeroed in on Zabini as he approached Lily, having just assaulted Caden.

“Don’t touch her stomach,” Caden said at once, his tone surprisingly stern and serious. Lily had been preparing to kick Pierce, certain that he wouldn’t listen to them, but Caden’s tone did the trick; Zabini fell short and dropped his hands back to his sides.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, his eyes glued to Lily’s stomach. “You fucking _did it_ , mate!”

“Er…thanks, Pierce?” Caden said, clearly as confused as Lily was. Zabini seized him in another hug.

“Pierce, sit the fuck down,” Jillian finally muttered, annoyed. “What are you congratulating him for—no offense, Caden—”

“Yeah, none taken,” Caden agreed at once.

“Lily’s the one doing the hard work,” Jillian finished. She looked at Lily. “Men are obnoxious.”

“All men are _not_ obnoxious,” Pierce argued at once, affronted.

Emi, Jillian, and Lily exchanged an identical look.

“She really just meant you, I think,” Lily finally said.

As their group switched from gaping at Lily’s pregnant state to throwing around mutual insults, Lily felt much more at ease. After ten minutes—and after answering what felt like a ridiculous amount of personal questions about her pregnancy and everything surrounding it—everybody seemed to accept it. There was a generous amount of excited chatter about the twins, their friends made it clear that they wanted to be a part of it, and then they all got back to normal. It was difficult to drink plain butterbeer while everybody else had _real_ drinks, but it helped to see that her friends who’d known her for so long still saw her as _Lily_. Even if she was twice or even triple the size.

“Wasn’t so bad,” Lily admitted, once she and Caden had returned to the Den. “I still don’t like Zabini much, but there’s nothing to be done for that at this point.”

“Probably not,” Caden agreed. “We’ll just limit his time with the twins so he won’t influence their personalities.”

“Thank Merlin we live in a different country.”

“Don’t let your parents hear you saying that.”

They followed the sound of giggling children to the sitting room, where James’s kids were running around like wild animals. Finnigan had a pair of his own pants on his head for whatever reason, Henry was shrieking with laughter as Harry lifted him up and down by his arms, Evra was chasing after Delilah (who was holding a pygmy puff in her tiny arms and giggling somewhat maniacally), Rory was cuddled up on James’s lap on the sofa, and in the middle of all the chaos, Scorpius, Albus, and Nora were sitting on the carpet grouped around Lyra and Benji. The newborns were cuddled up together on a blanket and Lily was truly amazed that they were sleeping through the noise.

“WE’RE BACK,” Lily shouted.

Caden headed straight towards the babies—no surprise there—but Lily was far more interested in the toddler who’d kidnapped the pygmy puff and her nephew who was wearing underwear like a hat. She walked across the room and cut Delilah off head on; Delilah laughed loudly as Lily leaned over and scooped her up. She wasn’t able to set her on her hip, so she lifted her all the way up and sat her on her shoulders instead, grateful for her own strength. Delilah giggled and giggled like nothing better had ever happened to her in her short little life.

“Yay!!!!” she shrieked, and Lily guessed she’d gone to clap her hands and had accidentally let go of the pygmy puff, because a second later, a blur of orange fur passed in front of Lily’s eyes. With Seeker reflexes, she quickly shot her hand out and caught it. The poor thing was traumatized and seemed to be gasping in fright. Lily tsked.

“You did a number on this little guy, Delilah,” she told her niece.

“I told her _no, no_ , but she didn’t listen!” Evra complained. Lily passed the poor pygmy puff to Evra, trusting that her eldest niece could go put it somewhere nicely. Evra stroked its head with her finger and spoke softly to it as she walked it upstairs where Delilah couldn’t find it again.

Lily tickled at Delilah’s side. Delilah squirmed and pulled at Lily’s hair to keep from falling off her shoulders, giggles tumbling madly from her lips. She caught herself smiling at her niece’s obvious joy, and for the next half hour, she played with Delilah and Henry, first taking turns carrying them on her shoulders, then throwing Delilah up into the air and catching her, then letting Henry jump from the top of the fireplace mantel and catching him in her arms. It was a great workout (and probably the most active she’d been able to be since coming home), and her niece’s and nephew’s smiles were unfairly adorable. She took Rory, Finnigan, and Evra outside after that and half-watched them as they ran around the vast garden. After Finnigan tired of trying to stick his face into badger holes to see if they wanted to ‘play’, he made his way over to Lily and plopped down beside her on the garden bench.

“Okay, Finnigan,” Lily said. She reached up and popped the band of the pants still on Finnigan’s head. “What’s with the pants?”

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he leaned in. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Oh, fuck, here we go...yeah, okay, but if you did something really bad like burnt a building down, I might tell your parents. I might.”

He blinked. His long eyelashes brushed his cheekbones as he did. “Mummy and Daddy know.”

“Oh. Then it’s not really a secret, is it?”

He leaned in closer so that his mouth was only a few centimeters from Lily’s ear. “Henry weed yesterday all over Roxie’s sofa.”

Lily wasn’t really sure how this related to Finnigan running around with pants on his head. “Really? Is the sofa okay?”

Finnigan looked at her like she was incredibly thick. “Sofas aren’t alive, Lulu.”

“No, I meant—oh, nevermind. Okay, so what does that have to do with these? Henry’s like…two. Of course he’s going to have accidents.”

“Three.”

“Whatever. My point is he’s probably only just been toilet trained.”

“He felt like a big baby and he was so embarrassed. So I brought extra pants in case it happens again ‘cause then he can just change and nobody will know,” Finnigan told her wisely.

There were plenty of flaws to Finnigan’s ‘brilliant’ plan, but Lily found herself melting. She knew it was her stupid hormones, but she couldn’t stop herself from pulling him into a tight hug.

“You’re so fucking adorable, Finnigan,” she told him.

“I know.”

“You’re a good big brother. You’re going to be a great cousin, too.”

“I already _am_ a great cousin. I changed Lyra’s nappy all by myself yesterday!”

“Yeah?!” Lily leaned back and poked his tummy. He giggled and swatted at her hands. “I might have to have you come live with me to help me with the twins. I bet you’re better at changing nappies than I am.”

He absolutely lit up. His face glowed with an overjoyed smile. “ _YES,_ Lulu! I want to! Oh, I want to _so much!_ Can I sleep in Big Boy’s bed with him?! Can we go _now_?!”

She tugged gently on one of his curls. “Nah, not now. But maybe Mummy and Daddy will let you come see me this summer after the twins are born. Or maybe everybody will come and visit. You need to come to my sanctuary; you would _love it_.”

He beamed. “I want to be a dragon-all-gist _just like you_.”

“You should! You’ll always have a job at my sanctuary,” Lily promised.

Finnigan ran off to “try and catch some snakes” or something, Lily realized she’d lost track of Rory and Evra and wandered around the garden in search of them (Rory was in a pear tree stealing fruit, Evra was ‘organizing the furniture’ in a ‘bee sanctuary’ she and Harry had built), and then they were all called in for lunch. Lily made her way eagerly to the counter where all the food was laid out. She was halfway through a slice of buttered bread when her sister-in-law walked up to her.

“Lily, wasn’t Finnigan outside with you?”

Lily—her mouth still full of bread—froze. Her eyes widened slightly. _Shit_. She didn’t remember him walking inside with her. She quickly swallowed her mouthful of bread and gave Nora a slightly forced smile.

“Er…yeah. I know exactly where he is. I was…just…” she lifted up her slice of bread. “Getting a pick-me-up. I’ll go get him right now!”

Her progress was interrupted.  

“OH MY!” Scorpius yelled, horrified.

“FINNIGAN, GET THAT AWAY FROM LYRA!” Albus shouted, and when Lily looked in her brother’s direction, she saw Albus had thrown his body over Lyra’s Moses basket to protect her from…

Finnigan. Standing at the end of the cot with a garden snake casually wrapped around his arm. Nora inhaled sharply. A brief, stunned silence fell over the kitchen.

“I found one,” Finnigan told Lily happily. “Told you I could get a snake.”

“Yeah…nice one, Finnigan,” Lily said. She felt her cheeks warm as people glanced at her, certainly judging her for allowing Finnigan to seek out snakes. She felt Caden brush against her arm as he walked forward. He kneeled in front of Finnigan and very gently pulled the snake from his hands.

“HEY!” Finnigan complained. “Cade!! I want the snake!”

“The house is not a good place for snakes,” Caden explained. “You almost gave Uncle Albus a heart attack.”

“Oi! He had it near my _baby_ , Caden!” Albus protested.

“BUT…BUT…” Finnigan’s eyes swelled with tears. “AUNTIE LULU SAID _YES_! SHE DID! TALK TO _HER_ ‘CAUSE SHE SAID _YES_!”

Caden looked over at Lily. If she was being honest, she didn’t even _remember_ saying yes to Finnigan’s snake request, but it seemed worse to admit that. She grimaced. Caden looked back at Finnigan.

“Auntie Lulu didn’t mean you could take it _in the house_ ,” he countered.

“But she said _yes_ —”

“And Mummy says _no_ ,” Nora interrupted, her tone surprisingly stern. “There are babies in the house, Finnigan. It’s dangerous to have snakes running about—”

“Snakes don’t run, Mummy! No legs.”

“ _Finnigan_ …” Nora warned.

He groaned. “ _But it’s a nice snake_!”

Caden stood, the snake now winding its way up his forearm.

“I’m going to go find a place to put the snake. You can come along and help me pick or you can stay in here and argue. Your choice.” He shrugged. Finnigan responded just as Caden had probably hoped. He jumped in place.

“I want to help pick the spot!”

“Okay then, let’s go do it!”

Lily glanced up at her sister-in-law once Caden and Finnigan had set out to return the snake.

“I didn’t realize he was serious about catching a snake,” she admitted. “He muttered something about snakes but I guess I just sort of…nodded.”

Nora gave her a tired smile. She reached out and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. It’s his new ‘thing’. He caught a mouse at school and brought it home in his bag.”

Lily couldn’t stop from laughing. “Holy fuck.”

Her sister dropped her hand and reached up. She set her palm on Lily’s stomach, and to Lily’s surprise, she found she didn’t mind it much at all.

“The garden snake wouldn’t hurt anything, of course, but James and I have to be very clear on what is and isn’t allowed in the house. Finnigan exploits grey areas. If we let him bring a garden snake in the sitting room for an hour, he’d show up in our bedroom with a python the week after.”

Lily felt embarrassed. “That makes sense.”

Nora gave her stomach a final pat. “I actually think your parenting style will work well for your kids,” she said kindly. “It’s good sometimes to not sweat the small stuff. It’s good to give them space when you can.”

Lily was so surprised to receive a compliment from _Nora_ on _parenting_ that she was rendered speechless. She wasn’t sure what to say, and it took her a long span of time to actually process what she’d been told. By the time she realized a thank you was in order, Nora had already smiled and walked off to take Benji from James. Lily felt a bit stunned.

“You all right?” her mum checked in. She stopped beside Lily, Henry perched on her hip. “You’re not having pain, right?”

“No. Well—not that sort of pain. My entire body hurts on and off.”

“Naturally,” her mum nodded. “Pregnancy’s a bit like hell sometimes.”

Lily nodded. She turned to face her mum. “Mum, I had a _nightmare_ last night. Like a proper wake-up-drenched-in-sweat nightmare.”

Her mum winced. “Ooh, I hoped you wouldn’t. I had nightmares during all my pregnancies. Vivid dreams are actually fairly common. I once had a dream where your dad and I were nude bathing in the Great Lake and suddenly my—”

The intermingled sounds of both Benji’s and Lyra’s shrieks cut off Ginny’s words. Lily winced slightly; she still wasn’t used to how shrill and demanding the crying was. She glanced over her shoulder and watched as James and Scorpius took the babies and headed into the sitting room to comfort them. When she turned back around, her dad had joined them.

“Hey, Gin,” he whispered to Lily’s mum. He shot a cagey look at Lily from the corner of his eye and leaned in closer to Ginny. “Have you received… _you know_?”

Ginny stepped closer to him, too, so they were standing nearly chest-to-chest. She lowered her voice, too. “Just this morning. I put it… _you know_.”

Lily scrunched up her nose distastefully. “Is this a sex thing? Because it sounds kinkier than I’m comfortable with. I get that you two have sex, but I’m not ready to accept that you go all in.”

To Lily’s surprise, her mum shifted Henry over so he was perched on her other hip and therefore blocking Lily from seeing her mum’s face. Rude. Lily reached out and pulled Henry from Ginny’s arms; he squeezed her in a hug happily and didn’t complain.

“Mum, what are you two being so sneaky about?” she demanded. After another suspicious look her way, she remembered what day it was. Or, more to the point, what specific day was drawing nearer and nearer. She perked up. “Oh, is this about my birthday? What’d you get me?! Dad, what did you get?”

Her dad ignored her. “We’ll deal with it at dawn,” he said cryptically.

“Good thinking,” Ginny said, and with that, she leaned in and kissed Harry, leaving Lily even more confused.

Lily helped Albus levitate all the food to the table. Caden and Finnigan returned from their mission right as Lily was finishing up; she and Caden sat down in their usual seats at the Den dining table.

“How’d it go?” she asked him.

He struggled not to laugh. “Finnigan insisted that we bring the snake leaves so it has some lunch.”

“But snakes don’t eat—”

“I was not going to be the one to tell him that. Did you know he’s got a pet mouse at home? He named it Frankie.”

Lily snickered, amused. She reached over and slid her hand between Caden’s thighs and leaned into his side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders in response.

“To be honest, I wasn’t even listening to Finnigan when he asked me if he could go catch snakes. I just nodded,” she whispered.

Caden leaned in. “To be honest, I would have let him keep the snake. Without a doubt.”

They laughed quietly. Lily was feeling much better than she’d felt that morning—though her wonderful snogging session in the garden shed had certainly contributed to it—and because of that, she didn’t mind answering questions about her pregnancy. She and Nora got into a conversation about back pain, and it was so weird to Lily to suddenly find herself and Nora with something more than Quidditch in common. She quite liked it.

“I had a nightmare,” she admitted, a half hour into their long conversation. She drained her pumpkin juice and set her cup back down. To her left, she heard Scorpius and Albus absolutely _gushing_ to Caden about Lyra’s newfound ability to sleep for three hours straight. “My mum said she got them when she was pregnant. It was weird.”

“Oh, I had those, too!” Nora told her excitedly. Lily remembered suddenly that Nora didn’t really have any ‘fellow mum’ friends besides Victoire (but Victoire had been pregnant before her and hadn’t had another baby since Remus). It made her feel special to know that she could relate to Nora in ways that even Nora’s own friends couldn’t. “I had one when I was pregnant with Evra that was awful…the Bloody Baron chained me down and tore my fingernails off one by one.”

Lily grimaced. “Eugh! Fuck! That’s horrible! Mine wasn’t as violent as that.”

“It felt very real. I felt strange all day afterwards,” she recalled. “I couldn’t go into the Great Hall that night for fear of seeing the Baron.”

Lily relaxed. “Yeah, I felt strange for a while, too. How long did you have them?”

“On and off ‘til the end. I don’t remember having any after my kids were born, though. A few anxiety dreams during the first few weeks, but that’s expected when you’re only getting a couple hours of sleep at a time. How’s your skin? Are the tattoos over your hip ruined?”

Lily glanced around the table, and when she determined that nobody was looking at her, she lifted her shirt up and turned to the side, so Nora could see where the flowers on her hipbone were beginning to stretch with her skin. Nora brightened.

“Aw! The bee! Did Evra draw that?!”

Lily realized she’d forgotten to tell her. “Oh, yeah! She painted it on while I was here for Delilah’s first birthday. I had it tattooed once I returned home. Looks nice, right?”

“It does! Will the muggle artist be able to fix it if it stretches?”

Lily nodded. “He thinks so. My mum gave me a potion to rub on my skin a few times a day, too, so hopefully it won’t be so bad.”

“It’s definitely nothing like what muggle women go through,” Nora said. “My cousin had a baby and…” she leaned in and lowered her voice. “They cut and stitched her up…you know. Down there.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “As Scorpius would say…her ‘lady parts’?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, fucking hell! No! Absolutely not!” Lily said, horrified. Her outburst had been louder than intended.

“Everything okay?” Scorpius asked, concerned.

“Yeah! Just—you _are_ taking these babies out from _here_ , right?” Lily demanded, gesturing at her stomach.

Scorpius balked. “Am—Am _I_ birthing them?!”

Lily felt her heart plummet. “What?! Of course you’re birthing them! You’re my healer! Your potions got me into this!”

“Oh! Um! I didn’t—know! That you…wanted me to!” Scorpius looked incredibly taken aback. He bounced Lyra a bit nervously in his arms. “Are you coming here? Or…am I coming there?”

“Wait a moment,” Albus interrupted. “Lily, I don’t think it’s safe for us to travel by Portkey with Lyra. She’ll still be so small.”

Lily felt panicky. “But you have to do it! I don’t trust anybody else! Scorpius!”

Scorpius looked at Albus. “We could take the muggle airplane?”

“Put our Lyra on a giant piece of metal that goes through the air with loads of germy strangers?!” Albus leaned over and set his palm against Scorpius’s forehead. “Are you ill?!”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Ginny ordered. “We’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.”

Lily wasn’t feeling comforted. She gripped her stomach. “Calm down?! I’ve got two entire humans who are going to have to come out of me somehow and now I don’t even have a healer!”

“It will be okay,” Ginny said. “Lily. Look at me.” She did. Her mum’s eyes bore into hers. “It’s going to be okay. I _promise_.”

Lily’s eyes automatically flickered to her dad. He nodded at her once. “It will, Lulu.”

She still wasn’t very happy about having yet another thing to worry about, but she reluctantly turned back to her conversation with Nora.

“It’s scary, but it all goes by rather quickly,” Nora reassured her.

Lily had no choice but to accept that; Nora had been through it so many damn times, so if anybody knew what they were talking about when it came to childbirth, it was her. Lily leaned back in her seat and set a hand over her stomach as the twins made a few statement kicks, as if chiming into the conversation. And she wasn’t really sure how she felt about anything at any given moment, but she did know that she couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to go through all of this and then give the babies away. For the first time, she fully appreciated the difficult thing her sister-in-law had done, and she couldn’t help but wonder (somewhat morbidly) what it had been like.

“How…er…” Lily trailed off and struggled to put her curiosity into words without it being too rude. “How have you been? Since…you know…the birth and…stuff.”

Nora seemed to catch onto Lily’s true question easily. She dropped her eyes down to her plate and picked up her fork.

“Oh. Um.”

Lily waited. She watched Nora push her half-eaten chicken around her plate for a few moments, her heart growing oddly heavy, as if she were the one struggling to answer the question.

“It was really bad. Right afterwards. But I knew that it would be, so it wasn’t…surprising. But everything turns out okay in the end, you know? Benji wasn’t meant to come to us for another month at least, but he did, right when Jamie and I needed it most, and I can’t tell you how healing it has been to have him.”

Lily glanced towards the end of the table, where Benji was cradled in James’s arms. He already looked a lot like Rory.

“Did you tell Rory that he’s her biological brother?” Lily wondered.

“Yes. Absolutely. And it’s been really great for her already. We’re so relieved that she’s got somebody in the family who’s like her…it’s been so hard for us to think about her being left at home while all her siblings go off to Hogwarts, but now she’ll have somebody with her, and that’s more than we could’ve ever hoped for. Jamie is still working on a non-magical program for Hogwarts—probably on its own campus nearby the castle—and Rose has been working with a special committee to change the laws surrounding employment in the magical world so there are more job opportunities for non-magical people, but we have no idea how long it will take to bring public opinion around.”

Lily thought that Rory would probably be an adult by the time a Squid program was approved for Hogwarts, but she didn’t want to say that aloud to Nora.

“How has it been for you? All of this?” Nora continued curiously. “The Lyra situation, I mean.”

Lily shrugged. She looked over at Scorpius and watched as he kissed Lyra’s little nose. “I feel really disconnected from it all, I guess. I haven’t really spent much time with her.”

“I haven’t either,” Nora admitted, her voice lowered so only Lily could hear. “I haven’t even really _held her_ yet. I’m sort of afraid to.”

Lily felt a rush of affection and relief. “I am, too.”

Nora smiled at her. Lily smiled back. Her sister reached over and patted her knee.

“If you ever need to talk about what you’re going through, I’m here, and no question is too embarrassing, okay?”

Lily considered asking her about her sex-related concerns, but she was sure that Nora and James had never had any sex that wasn’t sugary sweet and gentle, so Nora probably wouldn’t have any advice for her.

“How big do you think my stomach will get?” Lily asked instead.

Nora studied the proportions of Lily’s belly with the same concentration she often gave her vault blueprints. “Hmm…I’d say at _least_ out to here.” She held her hand eight inches in front of Lily’s belly. Lily groaned.

“I’m going to have to use magic for _everything_ ,” she complained.

Nora nodded. “Almost certainly. It’ll make you a more powerful witch, though.”

Lily perked up. “You think?”

“Definitely. Practice builds skill.”

Feeling a bit more cheerful, Lily returned to her lunch—well, everything _but_ the chicken Albus had brought—and spent the rest of the meal in decent spirits.

* * *

 

Shortly after lunch, Lily returned to her bedroom to lie down. A headache came on rather quickly and left her feeling too poorly to continue socializing. When she heard footsteps headed her way after only a few moments of resting in the cool, dark room, she assumed it was Caden, her mum and dad, or maybe James. She was wrong.

“Lily, hi, could I come in?” Scorpius asked softly.

“Yeah, sure,” Lily called, her face still hidden beneath her pillow.

She heard the muffled sound of the door opening. “How are you feeling?”

“Eh.”

“I’m going to check your blood pressure, okay?”

“All right,” she said. She hadn’t even considered that something might be wrong with her. “I think it’s just a headache.”

“It probably is. I just want to be sure.”

She waited patiently as he tapped his wand against her inner wrist and took her blood pressure.

“Well?” she asked.

“Perfectly fine,” he reported. He sounded relieved. She sensed that there was something else he wanted to say.

“What’s going on?” she asked. She pulled the pillow off her face and groped along the duvet for her glasses. She shoved them back on. Scorpius was nervously rotating his wand between his fingers.

“I just…well, Lyra’s first week was so hectic, and I haven’t really had time to talk to you about…everything. And…I’m really, really, _really_ sorry, Lily.”

There was no way she could’ve doubted his apology; his eyes were filled with genuine regret. Lily sat up slowly. Her hands fell naturally to rest on her belly.

“Sorry? Because of the potions?” she asked.

After a moment, she realized his grey eyes were filling with tears. She scrambled to stop his crying before it began.

“Don’t cry! Scorpius, I’m not angry with you. Well, I was a bit cross at the start, but I know you didn’t mean to. It’s okay, I promise.”

He looked up at the ceiling and tried to get a hold of himself. It took him a moment, but thankfully, he didn’t succumb to sobs.

“I just feel so guilty. The more I think about it, the worse I feel. I promised you that it would be okay…you trusted me, and I ended up giving you something that harmed you. You were ill for ages. And now _this_. This isn’t what you wanted and I feel horrible that I ended up doing this to you when all you were trying to do was help me.”

“It’s okay,” she repeated, for lack of knowing what else to say. “Really. It is what it is. You did your best, and you know what? I don’t regret it. Not any of it. I’m really glad that you’ve got Lyra.”

He reached up and lightly patted his eyes with a handkerchief. It was so pitiful that Lily fought the urge to reach over and hug him.

“I was afraid you regretted it,” he said, much to Lily’s shock.

“What? Why would you think that?”

He frowned. “You’ve only held her one time. You and Caden are staying at the Den when you usually stay with Al and me. You spent all day today with James’s kids and didn’t visit with Lyra once.”

“Well, to be fair, James’s kids are a bit more demanding of my attention than a newborn that can’t talk,” Lily pointed out. She knew there was no point denying that she’d been avoiding Lyra. “I guess I’m just not really sure how to feel. If I wasn’t pregnant, I think it’d be really different…I think I’d be able to hold her easily. But now that I am and I realize that Lyra’s made from the exact stuff that my babies right now are—well, on my end of it, at least—it’s confusing for me. I’m really scared I’ll realize that I’m absolute _rubbish_ at it.”

He looked worried. “Rubbish at taking care of a baby?” 

Lily fiddled with her opal rings. “Rubbish at knowing what babies need. Rubbish at comforting them. Rubbish at everything. If I hold Lyra, and she’s—at the start—objectively connected to me in the same biological ways these babies are, but I can’t figure out how to care for her despite that, what if that means I won’t be able to care for the twins?”

“Oh,” he realized.

“I’m just not ready. That’s okay, right?”

“Of course. Of course it is, Lily,” he promised immediately. “You can have as much time as you need. Honestly, you can have whatever you need for the rest of your life. I can’t express how grateful Albus and I feel for you every single day. You and Nora…you gave us our daughter and there is nothing greater in this world. Nothing better has _ever_ happened to us. And we wouldn’t have known this love or known this wonderful little person if you hadn’t helped, and you did it without expecting anything in return, and even now when helping us really complicated your own life you still don’t regret it and…” he was growing emotional again. “And I’m really, really surprised that you still want me to be your healer. I’m really surprised that you even want to talk to me.”

Lily was taken aback. “Fuck, Scorpius, you feel _that_ guilty about all of this?”

He nodded miserably.

“Look. And I’m sure my brother has tried to tell you this over and over again, only with more insults thrown my way—”

“No, Lily, we’re _both_ so grateful for you,” Scorpius insisted.

Lily would believe that when she saw it, but she let it go for now.

“You have no reason to feel bad. You weren’t _trying_ to make me ill or super-fucking-fertile. It just happened. Now we know. And yeah, it’s really inconvenient. And I was really, really upset and frightened. But I’m really…” she trailed off, embarrassed. She forced herself to be honest about how she felt, because she knew it would help Scorpius, and she really liked her brother-in-law and she never wanted him to feel bad. “I’m glad that it happened,” she admitted, quickly and with flushed cheeks. She rubbed her hand nervously over her stomach. “I sort of like them. The alien babies. I wasn’t sure at first, but every day they feel more and more like _mine_ , and every day I realize that I would be really, really upset if something happened to them, and that’s something I never expected, but it feels like…a gift.” She thought about her dad’s words nearly two weeks ago now. _The right people have a way of coming into your life at the right time, even if you weren’t expecting them. Even if you thought you weren’t ready._ “ _But_ to be quite frank,” she continued, “you need to take the potions off the market immediately and ring everybody who’s taken it. Not every woman will appreciate suddenly having multiple babies. Some might throw flaming bags of dragon dung through your window.”

“I did warn everybody! I did at once!” he squeaked, clearly horrified at the very idea that he hadn’t. “I had it pulled from the hospital and no healers are allowed to give it out.”

“Good,” Lily said, relieved. She patted over the spot one of the babies was currently kicking. “You can be my healer and do my birth and all will be entirely forgiven,” she teased.

“I wouldn’t want me to be my healer. I messed up.”

“I mess up all the fucking time. It’s okay if you made a mistake, Scorpius, ‘cause I still trust you. And I really, really want you to do it because I know you care about me and you care about the babies, and I know you’ll never be careless.”

She felt naked after saying those words. She crossed her arms over her stomach and looked to the side, her cheeks burning. Scorpius looked extremely touched.

“Then I will,” he promised. “I don’t know how yet…but I will. I won’t let you down.”

Lily leaned forward as far as she could manage and lightly punched Scorpius’s arm. “You’re a great big brother.”

His face lit up. He bounced forward and pulled her into an exuberant hug. “You’re my favorite little sister,” he said.

“And I had _steep_ competition,” Lily teased.

Scorpius, still beaming, said: “Oh! I also brought you this. Headache Draught, hospital-grade. Ran home to get it.”

“Nice one,” Lily appreciated.

She felt better within seconds of swallowing the contents of the potion vial. She and Scorpius headed back downstairs.

“Why do you call them ‘alien babies’?” Scorpius wondered.

Lily looked up at him. “Because they looked like aliens for the longest time. It just sort of stuck. Why do you and Albus call Lyra ‘pumpkin’?”

“Her hair’s sort of orange-ish in certain light. And she’s _adorable.”_

“Pumpkins are adorable?”

“…I see what you’re saying now,” he agreed. He smiled sheepishly. “It just stuck.”

They rejoined the larger group, and to Lily’s surprise, Nora was the one cradling Lyra. Going by the smile on her face, her emotions weren’t devastating or painful. Lily was happy for her. She evaded her nieces and nephews as she searched for Caden, not wanting to get roped into playing any games with them, and she _finally_ spotted him sitting with her dad in his garden. They appeared to be engaged in conversation. Intrigued, Lily made her way slowly towards them, mindful not to brush against any garden gnomes or step on any of her dad’s plants. As she drew nearer, she realized that stupid book about gardening with grandkids was on her dad’s lap; she guessed Caden had given it to him.

“I was worried about that, too,” she heard her dad say, his voice surprisingly gentle. She edged forward even more, now _very_ interested in their conversation. She wished she’d been given her dad’s invisibility cloak; damn James for being born first. “I can’t tell you how worried I was.”

“I don’t know how to tell her that,” her boyfriend admitted. “Because she doesn’t like people fussing over her. And she doesn’t like limitations.”

For a horrible second, Lily thought Caden was telling her dad all about their pregnancy-related sex problems. She felt her face burn. She was prepared to jump into their conversation and throttle Caden, but she decided to wait and see what happened. She was glad she did.

“I don’t think there’s much you can really do. Hopefully she knows her own limitations…I’m sure she thinks about her safety at least a little bit. But I really understand because I know what that feels like. My wife didn’t have even _near_ as dangerous a job as Lily does, but when she was early on with James, there was this incident during a Quidditch match…Merlin, it was awful. I can still hear the sound of her body smacking into the post—” her dad’s words severed.

“Fuck,” Caden muttered softly, horrified.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Certainly one of the scariest.”

“And you’ve seen a lot of things like that.”

Harry laughed dryly. “So Professor Binns still gets a bit of teaching in, does he?”

“A bit,” Caden laughed. “Enough for me to know your childhood was shit.”

“I’d drink to that.”

“Cheers.”

Lily heard the sound of two glasses clinking together. She hadn’t even noticed that they had butterbeer with them. She felt a bit left out for a moment; there were few things in the world she would’ve enjoyed as much as sitting between her dad and Caden and sharing butterbeer and laughter. But she knew whatever had transpired between them while she’d been gone would not have happened with her there.

“You should just tell her that you worry about her,” Harry said, after a long yet comfortable silence. “I know Lulu, and I think knowing that you’re worried might at least make her reconsider what risks are worth taking.”

“Maybe. I’ll try. Thanks for talking with me. Part of me felt like I was being ridiculous for worrying so much, and I don’t have anybody to talk to about it. My friends aren’t dads. Lily’s brothers never had to have quite the same worries…the mother of their babies wasn’t out there wrestling dragons every day. And I don’t have a dad or any family. So I really appreciate the advice, especially since I know you’re not exactly my biggest fan.”

Lily had no idea what her dad was feeling after those words, but if he wasn’t feeling gutted, she wasn’t sure if she could ever look him in the eye again. _Lily_ felt horribly upset after them and it wasn’t even her that Caden was speaking to. She felt an insane wave of protectiveness swell within her; she wanted to run over there and take her boyfriend’s face in her hands and kiss him. She wanted to remind him that _she_ was his biggest fan and that he always had her. But something kept her from moving. Deep down, she _really_ wanted this conversation to go well between them, and this was probably the crossroads.

“I didn’t like you much at the start,” her dad began, after a heavy pause. “But I don’t think that ever had much to do with you. In some ways, I think you reminded me of me.”

It wasn’t what Lily had expected to hear—not even close. She furrowed her brow, unsure how her dad was coming to that conclusion. To her, the two were nothing alike.

“Seriously?” Caden asked, his voice just as skeptical as Lily felt.

“Yes. The way your life played out…an orphan in your first two years of life, a surname that brought you attention wherever you went, an association with the Dark Arts you couldn’t escape…your tendency for rule breaking when you thought it was the right thing to do—like practicing the Imperius with Lily, like when you two took over Delphi’s Mini Death Eater Club, like when you helped Lily sneak out of Hogwarts, break into the Hog’s Head, and steal thirty dragon eggs from a poacher—”

Lily’s jaw dropped.

“You knew about that?” Caden interrupted, surprised.

“Of course I did. Thirty dragon eggs mysteriously go missing in the Hog’s Head? My kid did it.  And I saw you both on my map.”

“I was not aware that you had that map our seventh year.”

“Unfortunately for me.”

“Yeah. Erm. Sorry.”

“I wasn’t as worried about it at that point, though. After what happened with Delphi...I felt a lot better about it.”

“About Lily and me?”

“Yes. I mostly trusted you after that, but I’ve still had reservations over the years. Because offering to die for the people you care about…well, it’s every dad’s dream that his daughter will find somebody who’d die for her, but offering to die for somebody doesn’t always mean you’ll be a great partner or parent. I did that—offered to die for them—but I still wasn’t the best boyfriend or friend. At times, I wasn’t the best husband or father, either.”

Caden shook his head. “That’s not the way Lily tells it. She thinks you hung the moon.”

“I wish that were true. I made loads of mistakes, some that I’ll never fully forgive myself for. And because I saw myself in you—no matter how fair that was or wasn’t—I saw you making those same mistakes, too, and the last thing I wanted was my daughter to have to go through what I sometimes put my family through. Raising a family when you never really had one…it’s difficult. I often tried to do the exact opposite of what my aunt and uncle did—thinking that anything opposite to them was the right thing—but I ended up making mistakes doing that. And I worry that you’ll do the same. Ginny always tells me it isn’t fair to judge you this way, and I’ve always known she’s right, but I guess…well, Lulu’s my little girl. I think you’ll understand once your kids are here.”

“I think I will, too.”

Lily’s dad sounded a bit sheepish. “I’m glad we talked. I’m glad you brought this book. Because I don’t think I need to worry anymore. You already know something that took me _ages_ to learn: how to talk about the things you’re worried or upset about. I think Lu could really benefit from learning some of that, too. And, you know, it might not be ideal—the pregnancy—but…I’m proud of you both and I think you’re going to do a good job.”

“You should tell Lily that. I think she could use the encouragement.”

 _Fuck you, Caden, I don’t need encouragement,_ Lily thought, annoyed. _I’m not a baby._ But she had to admit her heart had inflated at her dad’s words. It meant a lot to know that he was proud of her. It meant a lot to know he had confidence in her, too.

“She’ll be all right. If anything, she’s always been resilient.”

Gradually, the oddest conversation Lily had ever overheard pandered off. They leaned back against the bench and drank their butterbeers in silence. After a moment, Lily’s dad pointed up at the sky.

“Oh, look. A Greenfinch.”

Lily’s boyfriend—who was probably secretly an old man only pretending to be a cool, handsome twenty-one-year-old—replied: “It’s got magnificent coloring.”

“You know, I saw a lapwing last month.”

“Seriously?”

Lily resisted the urge to groan in annoyance. Maybe she _didn’t_ want them to get on after all.

* * *

 

“Dad’s out there having a heart-to-heart with my boyfriend,” Lily greeted. Her mum looked up; she had both Benji and Lyra on her lap and was singing to them. “Now they’re bird watching.”

“Really?” her mum asked, intrigued. She smiled. “Well, good! I’m glad your dad is coming around fully.”

Lily walked over and sat on the sofa beside her mum.

“It’s a bit weird.”

Her mum looked back at the babies. She grinned hugely at them. “Only because you’re used to them mostly ignoring each other.”

“Still weird…” Lily sang. She rubbed her belly. “Ever since I’ve been back, everybody’s been so…emotional. How are people going to act when the babies are actually here?”

“Expect _loads_ of crying,” her mum said. Lily groaned. She threw her head back against the sofa cushions. Her eyes drifted to Lyra. She felt a strange squeeze in her heart as the baby gave a sudden smile in her sleep. She knew it was probably reflexive, but it was very cute, and Lily spotted something unexpected. “Hey. That’s my dimple, I think.”

Her mum leaned over and kissed Lyra’s chubby hands. The babies seemed _extremely_ content—Lily guessed they’d only just finished eating.

“It certainly is,” her mum agreed.

Lily caught her eyes drifting to Lyra, and then away, and then back again. She was curious, but she was a bit frightened of her curiosity.

“I think Scorpius and I made a great gene mix,” she admitted. “She really is very cute. Don’t you think so? Or do you think I only think that because I helped make her?”

“She really _is_ cute,” her mum promised her. “And certainly only going to get cuter. Do you want to hold her?”

“No,” Lily said quickly. “I’m all right.”

“You’re sure? She’s clean and she’s already been fed and winded and changed!”

“No, I just don’t want to,” Lily said uncomfortably. “Where are the Hover Dads, anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen them apart from her for this long in ages.”

Ginny frowned. “Scorpius had to go to work. There was an emergency. Albus wasn’t feeling very well and went to lie down. James and Nora are with their kids in the woods…Evra and Finnigan have been ‘cleaning up’ that old cottage in the back that you kids used to play in when you were little and wanted to show them. So I, of course, offered to babysit.”

“Big task,” Lily heard herself say, without even thinking it through. “Two babies.”

Her mum looked dryly at her. Her eyes dropped to Lily’s stomach. Lily felt her face heat up. Thankfully, her mum didn’t tease her.

“How are things today, love?” she asked instead. The _love_ told Lily her mum was more concerned about her than she was letting on. “Are you still feeling all right about all of this?”

“Well, I’m not turning back now,” Lily said. She fiddled with her rings. “Sometimes I’m really excited. And I can’t wait. And I think I can do it. And other times I’m terrified and I worry that I made a mistake.”

“Natural. I promise,” her mum reassured.

Lily pulled her rings off one by one and let them drop onto her lap, just to intensify her fiddling in the hopes it’d calm her nerves. “I’m scared of feeling trapped.”

Benji gave a sudden cry. Lily watched her mum lift him up into her arms, Lyra still cradled securely on her legs. He settled down quickly enough.

“Trapped?”

“Yeah. In my body—which might not even feel like _my body_ anymore before long.” She seriously considered asking her mum about sex. She picked up her favorite opal ring—rough-cut Australian opals arranged to make a tiny star – and slid it onto her finger, pulling it up and down over her knuckle. “I already can’t do much. And I won’t be able to do much of _anything_ later on. And Mum, I like to do stuff.”

Her mum was giving her a probing look. Lily felt like she was looking right into her mind.

“That can be frustrating. Not being able to do the stuff you want to do,” her mum finally said, and Lily could hear the layers of meaning in her words. She busied herself with putting her rings back on. “But there are always ways to accommodate change. There’s always a solution. I don’t think there’s anything on the earth more creative and resilient than women, Lulu. You’ve just got to sit down and try to figure out what things are most important to you…what things make you feel the most like _you_ , what things are necessary for you to get through the day and feel like an actual human. And once you figure those out, you find a way to make it work. Don’t spend your pregnancy in bed depressed. You’ll only resent the experience, and I don’t want that for you. I want you to really enjoy this.”

 She _wanted_ to enjoy it. That realization hit her with surprising force.

“What did you do?” she asked. Her tone was almost _shy_ —Lily couldn’t remember a time in her life she’d ever been shy. “I mean…you couldn’t exactly…play Quidditch anymore. And I’m going to guess that you really liked to play Quidditch. Well, I like to work with dragons.”

Her mum was struggling to contain her laughter. Lily felt her own lips twitch. Her mum leaned over and passed her Benji without saying a word (Lyra looked to be on the brink of fussing without Ginny’s full attention). Lily felt her heart thudding nervously as she carefully held the baby. It wasn’t easy with her protruding stomach.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I _did_ like to play Quidditch.” A pause. “I _do_ like to play Quidditch.”

Lily scrunched up her nose in disgust, but she caught herself laughing anyway.

“The good thing about Quidditch…and probably working with dragons, too…is that you can really…customize the experience.”

Lily didn’t want sex position advice. She knew plenty of those, and if she wanted a refresher, she could’ve just looked in a book. “Okay, yeah, and there are different ways to work with dragons, too, but what if there’s a certain way you already like to play Quidditch and it’s the _best_ way and you can’t do it that way anymore? And Quidditch might still be nice without that way but it’s not the _same._ ”

“Ooh,” her mum said knowingly. She bounced Lyra gently in her arms and looked at Lily. “You could use a feather-light charm to make yourself less heavy and give yourself more range of motion on top.”

Lily stamped her foot on the carpet. “Mum! Fuck! We’re talking in _code_ , damn it!”

“Oh, right, sorry! Merlin, okay! Since when do you have delicate sensibilities?!”

“We’re meant to have _some_ boundaries, Mum. Apparently.”

“Okay, fine. You can use a feather-light charm to make working with dragons easier. There. Better?”

Lily crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not really what I was getting at, though that’s a _really_ good idea—how long did it take you to come up with that one?”

Her mum looked innocently at the ceiling. “Not long,” she said lightly.

“Eugh,” Lily laughed. She elbowed her mum, amused. “Naughty.”

“If that’s not what you’re getting at, what _are_ you getting at?” her mum wondered.

“Well…usually it’s—working with dragons—a bit…rowdy.”

“Rowdy,” her mum repeated flatly.

“Yeah. Like…well, hey, do you remember Christmas before last?”

“Nobody is likely to _ever_ forget that.”

“Yeah. So wrestling and hitting—but not, you know, _real_ hitting, it’s all in good fun—and such. And my, er, fellow…dragon worker…has apparently got it into his head that I need to be protected. Which is…ridiculous and slightly gross.”

“Awww,” her mum said, much to Lily’s annoyance. “That’s sweet.”

“No, it’s frustrating,” Lily complained. “And I sort of get it, I guess…I mean, right now I’m like his entire family all in one, which is a bit stressful I suppose…but I just miss how things were before.”

“Well…that’s a tough one,” her mum said. “Because it won’t be fun or the same if he’s worried the entire time.”

“Not at _all_ ,” Lily agreed, her thoughts on how worried Caden had sounded while talking to her dad about something similar.

“My expert advice? Find something a bit safer that you both enjoy for the rest of the pregnancy.”

Lily sighed. “I figured you’d say that.”

“It’d take a lot to hurt the babies, but the biggest issue is probably psychological, and that won’t be easily fixed if he’s prone to worrying,” her mum said wisely.

It seemed to Lily that issues originating in one’s mind and heart were always the hardest to solve. And she just wasn’t any good at it in the first place.

“I also really want him to be able to feel the babies move and I’m getting _really_ annoyed with all the waiting,” she grumbled.

Her mum looked at her in surprise. “He hasn’t felt them yet?”

“No! It’s so aggravating. I think they’re kicking pretty hard, but he still swears it just feels like skin.”

“Hmm…eat a sugary snack, drink a glass of cold water, then try again.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “My mum’s giving me permission to eat sugar?”

Her mum held up a finger. “Just this once.”

Lily leaned against her mum’s side and hugged her arm. She smiled as her mum leaned down and kissed the crown of her head.

“Thanks for listening to me complain.”

“That’s my job.”

“You’ve got a lot of jobs.”

“Mm, yeah, you’re not wrong,” her mum agreed.

Lily looked up at her. “You’re good at all of them.”

Her mum smiled.

* * *

 

Lily ate a massive slice of cake, drank a glass of cold water in a few quick gulps, and then set off to find Caden. He was sitting with Nora on a bench closest to the house. The two were chatting as they watched the Potter children romp around with Harry and James.

“Hey,” Lily greeted. She fell down onto the bench beside Caden, reached over, grabbed his hand, and stuffed it up the bottom of her shirt.

“Hello?” he said, confused. He stretched his fingers out and pressed his palm against her bare belly. “Something wrong?”

“Shh…just focus. I want you to feel them move. I’m tired of waiting,” she told him. She rested her head against the back of the bench and shut her eyes. She focused on the cool breeze against her skin, the warmth of the sunlight against her eyelids, the softness of Caden’s palm against her skin. _C’mon, alien babies_ , she encouraged. After an excruciatingly long minute of listening to the sound of wind chimes in the breeze and her nieces and nephews’ laughter, she began to feel discouraged.

“Ugh,” she complained. She lifted her head up and glared down at her belly. “You two have got no problems kicking me all night.”

Caden went to pull his hand free, but Lily reached down and grabbed it, stopping his movement.

“No, it’s going to happen,” she insisted stubbornly.

“I can wait. There’s no rush,” he told her.

“There is because I want you to feel it.”

Probably sensing that it was important to her, he relaxed back against the bench. After they sat together for nearly ten minutes, his hand on her belly the entire time, Lily was forced to concede defeat.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

“I’m not feeling well,” Caden admitted suddenly. Lily looked at him. He _did_ look a bit clammy. He leaned forward, his hand pulling out from underneath her shirt as he did. “I think I need to go lie down.”

“Really? Do you want me to go find Scorpius?” Lily asked, concerned.

“No, I just feel sick. I might vomit. I’m going to our room.”

“Okay,” she said. She grasped the edges of the bench and used them to hoist herself up. “I’ll go see if my mum’s got—”

“AUNTIE LULU! LULU, WATCH ME!” Rory cried. And she didn’t really have much of a choice. Rory and Henry ran over and grabbed her hands, tugging her over towards the treehouse they were playing in. She resisted them.

“Hang on,” she told them. She looked at Caden. “I think there’s nausea potion in the kitchen cupboard.”

He nodded. Lily was thinking about both him and Albus falling ill with a nagging suspicion that Albus—distracted by his baby—had failed to pay proper attention while cooking the chicken he brought. She hoped she was just being paranoid.

* * *

 

Lily pushed the bedroom door open around fifteen minutes later, once she’d finally snuck away from her nieces and nephews. The door had been left cracked, meaning Caden certainly _was_ bad off. He’d had an incident as a young child where he’d fallen ill and vomited in bed; from what he’d told Lily, he’d choked on his own sick so violently that he nearly passed out and ended up lying for an unsure amount of time in that state—ill, sick-coated, sobbing and terrified—until his grandparents realized something was wrong and came to his room. He never really said if the door was kept locked at night or if he was just too afraid to get out of his bed for fear of punishment, but whatever the reason he’d been stuck in that room, he’d developed a fear of being closed in when not feeling well. Lily had only seen him genuinely ill on two previous occasions (once at Hogwarts during their sixth year and once that first month after he moved to New Zealand with her), but both times he’d shown an aversion to being left alone or closed up. Never in an obvious way; he wasn’t one to whine or cling. He made excuses to camp on sofas in high-traffic areas (or, in the case of their sixth year, in the Room of Requirement with Lily) and never closed himself off. Lily found herself feeling a bit guilty to have left him alone now, even if she hadn’t really realized _how_ sick he was.

Upon entering, she was relieved to find him sleeping peacefully. Beyond a slight clamminess to his complexion, he seemed all right. Lily walked over and set her hand gently against his forehead. Thankfully, he wasn’t feverish. Content that he was okay—and was probably just feeling ill from lunch—she quietly bustled around the room, changing from her clothes into pajamas, rubbing cream into her stomach, popping into the bathroom to ready for a nap, and then finally settling down onto the bed heavily. It took her a moment to scoot over towards him; her middle acted infuriatingly like a fucking anchor, the weight of it chaining her movements down (particularly on soft surfaces). Once she’d made it over to his side, she settled down beside him. She rested her head on the edge of his pillow. She felt one of the babies aim a rather impressive kick at her lower left rib as she squirmed a bit closer; the second baby started twisting a few seconds later, not to be outdone by its twin. She pressed her stomach against his side and did her best to ignore them. He stirred slightly as she reached up and touched his cheek.

“Hey. You look a bit peaky,” she greeted.

He let out a soft groan. He blinked down at her a moment later. She smiled when their eyes met; her heart gave a weird jump when he smiled back.

“I don’t know how you dealt with nausea for as long as you did. I’ve only thrown up once and I feel like asking your dad to _avada_ me,” he croaked.

“Well, we all can’t be as strong as me,” she shrugged. She brushed his hair back. Her heart was swelling oddly as she did, so by the time she dropped her palm to his cheek, she felt like it might burst. Her mind was an odd tangle of thoughts—secondhand memories, visions of the future, present, tender thoughts. “I’m sorry you were alone.”

He lifted his head slightly to peer down at her, his eyes probing. She guessed he could sense the emotion hidden inside her words. She turned her face and kissed his shoulder rather than saying: _sometimes, the thought of what you went through makes me want to cry. Sometimes, I can’t believe how lucky I am, can’t believe how lucky the world is that you turned out the way you did, can’t believe how blessed our children will be. Sometimes, it astounds me how easy things are for you. My parents did everything right and I’m still so unsure…if we were all like you, the world wouldn’t have any problems ever again._

“What’s going on?” he asked softly.

In response—with her face still pressed into his shoulder, her heart filled to the brim, their unborn children moving restlessly—she reached for his palm and pulled it over, pressing it against her stomach. Her eyes burned against cotton as she struggled to put her emotions into words.

“You’re going to be a great dad,” she said finally, and the words made her shiver for reasons she couldn’t grasp. _I love you_. “Do you want tea or something?”

“Not right now.” His hand stroked gently over her maternity top. “You’re going to be a great mum, too, you know.”

“Yeah, maybe, but not like you,” she answered at once. She didn’t know if it was her concern for him or just her mind trying to process the conversation she’d overheard earlier between him and her dad, but her heart was full with appreciation for him. “You’re…I don’t know how you’re the way you are, honestly. If I’d been neglected like you were…I’d probably be a psychopath. And you’re…you. And you…I’m so proud of you and proud to call you mine and there’s nobody else I would _ever_ have had babies with and…honestly, right now, I’d quite like to wake you up properly.”

Her appreciation often morphed into arousal and now was no exception. She felt his hand drop to her hair. He pulled his fingers through it gently.

“Mmm, and I’d quite like to let you…raincheck for when I’m not close to vomiting?”

“Fuck yeah,” she agreed. As he stroked through her hair, her thoughts strayed back to the conversation between him and her dad that she’d overheard earlier. “Caden?”

“Lily?”

“The people that I know who were treated poorly when they were kids…they mostly grew up feeling like…I dunno, like they can’t do things right, or they’re not worthy, or…y’know?”

Deadpanned: “Are you asking me why I don’t have low self-confidence or are you asking me why I’m not mentally fucked up?”

“Sort of both, actually.”

Thankfully, he laughed. It was a bit dry, but it was a laugh. His hand moved to the front of her belly. She felt the babies both kick out again; she hoped he felt it, but going by his lack of reaction, he didn’t.

“I don’t really know how to answer that,” he admitted. “I just always knew that my grandparents were wrong, not me. I always blamed my parents for leaving me with them. I always knew that the way they treated me had nothing to do with _me_. In a way, I think all of this is why I felt so attached to Delphi growing up…Euphemia treated her like my grandparents treated me, and I can remember thinking, even as a little boy, that it clearly wasn’t _me_ that was disappointing or broken because Delphi was very different from me but Delphi was being treated that way, too. So it just became something about _them_ —Euphemia and her husband and my grandparents—and it didn’t reflect on the way I felt about my own worth or even Delphi’s.” He paused. His thumb caressed mindlessly over her stomach as he did. “I think I was mostly just lonely and scared. I spent so much time by myself in my own head, imagining that one day I’d be old enough and I wouldn’t need anybody’s help but my own…imagining that one day I’d be free from them and I’d have people who loved me and I wouldn’t have to be so uncomfortable or scared…” he trailed off again. “Neglect is weird because there’s just enough radio silence to convince yourself that _maybe_ they care deep down. Maybe they secretly love you but they just can’t show it right then, or maybe they think what they’re doing _is_ love…and then when they do the bare minimum for you, you know, like giving you dinner, that feels…a little bit like love. So it’s difficult to feel hatred or anger for them, or at least, that was my experience. Even now, thinking back, I can see that it was abuse and I know that I would rather die than _ever_ treat our babies that way, but even now…I mostly just feel glad to be old enough that I no longer have to rely on them to take care of me. I mostly just feel glad to be out of that situation. And maybe I feel a bit indifferent towards them—sort of like they were to me. Maybe that’s the effect they had on me, I dunno. What I do know is that I’ve always known that I’m in charge of _me_ …I learned that very early and I’ve always felt so…responsible for my own actions. Maybe because I had to rely on myself so much growing up. I don’t know why exactly. But I’ve never felt like other people’s actions are my fault. I’ve never felt like I can’t be a great dad because of the way I was treated, or that I’m lesser because I wasn’t loved. And I think that’s maybe what saved me. I always knew that _I_ could be better, I could _do_ that, and it had nothing to do with what others did or didn’t do. And I knew that all I had to feel guilty for were the things that _I did_ or didn’t do…I couldn’t feel guilty about things somebody else did to me. So if I was kind to somebody, that’s who I became to them: kind. Just like if my grandparents were cruel to me, that’s what they became to me: cruel. I can only be what I give to other people, not what other people give to me.”

She was quiet for a long while after he spoke. It was strangely revolutionary to her—the concept that your actions could determine who you were over your gut instincts—and she spent time considering it. She had always lived life thinking _well, this is who I am, and I know this is who I am because this is how I react, and that’s that_. She had never considered that she could craft her identity herself through the way that she reacted. She had never considered that she was continually making herself. But the more she thought about it, the truer it seemed. All the things that Caden was, he was that way with her all the time. He was patient because he was patient with her. He was loving because he loved her. Her heart was wide and she realized that he had just inadvertently given her an entirely new way to approach her maternal worries. She had spent so much time worrying that she wasn’t fit to be a decent mum, when all along, all she had to do was _be one_. And, really, that’s what it had come down to with her and Caden, right? The minute she stopped worrying about whether she was strong enough to love him and _just did_ , she freed herself to love him the way that she wanted (the way that he deserved.)

She looked at him, and as she did, she felt like somebody had lit a wick in her heart. “I think you make me better.”

“Always about you,” he teased. His arm went around her back. He hugged her close. “You make _me_ better.”

Lily snorted. “Yeah right.”

“No, you do. See, half the things I know about love, I wouldn’t have learned without you. Because you were the first person that I ever loved. Even when we were thirteen, there was always something about you—”

“My body?”

“I wasn’t quite as perverted at thirteen. That particular appreciation came later, but we certainly won’t understate its power. No, I just always trusted you and felt like you were so wonderful in ways nobody else seemed to notice…they noticed that you were a powerful witch, and clever, and pretty, and funny, but I always saw that you had the biggest heart. Ever since our first year when I saw you sitting on the damp, dropping-covered floor of the owlery with a cold and shivering owl on your lap. You made it look cool—caring about things. I liked how fiercely passionate you were about everything. I liked how straightforward you were; I could always trust that if you were spending time with me, you _genuinely_ wanted to be with me, because you didn’t do anything you didn’t want to do. And now, knowing that I earned your love and your trust when it’s not so easily won…well, that was a pretty decent confidence boost of its own.”

“You had won it long before I told you so.”

“Oh, I know. You’re a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them.”

“Let’s go back to talking about all the things you like about me,” Lily said. He kicked her, amused. Lily laughed along with him. She looked up and met his eyes after their laughter died off. She was glad to find him smiling. And, like she was so prone to doing, she spoke from her gut. The same gut that she could feel their children’s feet pressed against. The same gut his hand was over.

“I think I want them to be Rowles.”

His brow furrowed slightly. It seemed to take him a moment to process what she was saying. “You want to give the babies my surname? Only mine?”

Her heart stirred again. Emotion surged up her throat and made her eyes burn. She was able to fight it back after a few seconds. “Yes. Yours.”

He sat up. Despite his slightly hunched posture, his illness seemed to be forgotten for the moment. “Lily…that’s a huge burden.”

She set a hand on his arm and used it to help hoist herself into a sitting position, too. “And being a Potter wouldn’t be? Face it: no matter what, they’ll be stared at,” she pointed out.

“They’ll both gather attention. The difference is in the _type_ of attention. My surname was always a burden. People assumed horrible things about me from the second they heard my name; I had to work twice as hard as anybody else to be given the same chances. I had to be twice as kind, twice as calm, twice as friendly. You were certainly assumed to be kind and _good_ from the second people saw you.”

“Yeah. And sometimes that felt like a burden, too.” She didn’t have to remind him about her rebellious phase in their third year. It had felt so stifling at times, being a Potter, feeling like she could only act in ways that fit with that public image.

He seemed unsure of what to say. Going by his silence, it was clear he’d never anticipated that she’d feel this way.

“Why?” he asked.

The answer came easily. “Because you’re a Rowle. And I love you. And they’re our family.”

“But the Rowle name isn’t just mine. I share it with loads of…unfortunate people, both past and present. I’m not sure I want to share it with our babies…that seems like a punishment rather than a gift.”

Lily scoffed. “I don’t give a fuck about them. _You’re_ a Rowle. It’s _your_ name. And we’ll make it ours. We’ll revamp it, and in ten years, _Rowle_ will mean something completely different in New Zealand. It won’t be the name of nasty Dark wizards; it’ll be the name of the badass, beautiful, brave family who takes care of dragons and makes everybody else look boring.”

He smiled softly at that, amused. The smile faded as the seconds stretched on. “But we talked about having them educated here at Hogwarts with their cousins, remember? And here ‘Rowle’ will _always_ be associated with Dark wizards.”

“Until Iris and Elliot Rowle arrive. And take Hogwarts by storm with their wit and their charm,” Lily argued.

“Wouldn’t you rather associate them with your side of the family? They could be Potters and fit right in with all their Potter cousins. Why isolate them with _Rowle?_ ”

“Because _you are a Rowle_ ,” she repeated. She was getting frustrated. She felt she wasn’t adequately explaining herself and she desperately wanted him to understand. “You are and you’re a huge part of them. Half, to be precise. I don’t want to use it as a tribute to your idiotic parents. I want to use it because of you. Because you’re everything I hope our twins will be. And I just know that you’re somebody they would be so proud to share a surname with. And I want something that is _ours_.”

“How is naming them _Rowle_ ‘ours’? Isn’t that just ‘mine’? Why not Potter-Rowle or Rowle-Potter or…something like that?”

“It’s ‘ours’ because _you’re_ mine, you prat. How have you still not gotten that?” she demanded, incredulous. “You’re mine—Caden Rowle—and they’re mine—Elliot and Iris—and we’re each other’s and I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks or what they say…we’ll soon prove them wrong. You deserve to own your name on your own terms. It’s like you said…you can’t be defined by what people do to you, right? So why should you let your surname be defined by stuff other people did? Can’t we define it by all the great things _you’ve_ done? I’m including these babies on that list of great things, by the way. And if we’re going by the things that _this Rowle_ has done, I think you’ll find that it’s a great gift to the babies, after all.” 

His eyes burned into hers. She felt her heart pick up in response.

“I want to kiss you so fucking much. But I don’t know if I’ve got something contagious,” he finally admitted, his voice low and smooth and irresistible.

“It’s definitely food poisoning from Albus,” Lily dismissed, and with that, she leaned over and pressed her lips to his. He snogged her so thoroughly that she got entirely swept up in it; she would’ve eagerly fucked him if he hadn’t pulled away right as they were getting too involved in it.

“Stomach, sorry,” he groaned, his arms lowering to wrap around his middle. Having been in his position for months on end, Lily understood.

“I’ll get you tea. So the surname thing is settled.”

“Is it? I dunno. It’s still a bit…well, won’t you feel left out? Being the only Potter amongst Rowles?” he worried. He was looking paler by the minute. Lily summoned the sick bucket from the floor, sensing vomiting in his near future.

“Who said I’d be a Potter?” she asked airily. She had spent her entire life trying to make _Lily Potter_ hers when it was a hand-me-down that would forever be associated with its first owner. She liked the idea of owning a name unique to her, one that nobody else had ever had, one that she could build a legacy on that wouldn’t ever be overshadowed or confused with the accomplishments of her namesake. But before Caden could probe what she’d just said, she struggled her way off the bed, stood, and asked: “Ginger or peppermint?”

“I—…peppermint,” he said. A pause. “Are you proposing to me?”

“You’d know if I was proposing to you. Nothing subtle about me, remember?” she reminded him.

“Because if it’s happening, _I_ want to propose to _you_.”

She scoffed. “No, I want to do it!”

“No way! I’m doing it! I’ve already got a plan in mind!”

Lily was feeling too territorial to feel too shocked at that. She knew marriage wasn’t in the cards for a while; they’d talked about it briefly after being harassed for hours by Lily’s gran, and they’d both agreed that there was too much change going on already. Things were good between them the way they were, and Lily saw no reason to change things, nor did she really understand the point of marriage in the first place. They were already living together and building a house together and having babies together—what more could a wedding ceremony add to their relationship? And anyway, they would be stressed financially for a while due to the house currently being built in their absence. But, not to be outdone by him, she said: “Well, I’ve already got _two_ plans in mind!”

“Two plans? What—a plan and a backup?” he demanded.

“Yes, actually! So back off!”

“Make me!”

“I so will once you’re not green. Mark my words,” she said dangerously.

He sucked in a rapid breath. “LILY, WILL YOU—”

“NO!” she shrieked. She slapped her hands over her ears. “LA, LA, LA, LA, LA—!”

“YOU CAN’T DO THAT FOREVER!”

“CADEN, WILL YOU—”

A pillow made contact with her face before she could even finish her sentence. She took a moment to marvel at his precise aim while ill before throwing it right back at him. No mercy, not even for those with food poisoning. After violently hurling pillows at each other for a minute or so, Caden called for a truce, his voice weak and his arms going back around his stomach.

“Okay,” he said. “Neither of us will do it until the twins are at least five months old. Then—if we don’t hate each other by then— we can reconvene and decide who gets to do it. Deal?”

Lily considered that. If there was anything that could stress a relationship enough to break it, it’d be twin newborns. If they could make it to five months and still want to be together forever, that was a sure sign it’d last. It seemed sensible, and anyway, she didn’t _really_ have a solid plan yet. And she _definitely_ wasn’t getting married while she looked so horribly fat and couldn’t even shag him the way she wanted.

She walked downstairs to get his tea, but as she stopped in the sitting room, she realized this problem had spread a lot farther than she’d expected. James and Nora were weakly ushering their kids into the Floo, looking as sickly as Caden did, and the only child who didn’t look close to vomiting all over the carpet was Finnigan. _Uh oh_.

“I’m not feeling very well,” Lily’s mum admitted. She had placed Lyra in the Moses basket, but Lyra didn’t seem too happy about it. Scorpius was presumably still gone and Lily had heard the sound of Albus vomiting as she’d passed by his childhood bedroom.

“Albus fucked up the chicken,” Lily declared at once. “Think about it. He probably ate some first while he was cooking, and he started vomiting first. I feel fine, and Finnigan looks like he feels fine, and what do Finnigan and I have in common?”

“You didn’t eat the chicken,” her dad realized. His face was a bit green.

“Right. Bang-up job, Dad.”

Her mum fanned her face. “Oh, wow. I feel _really_ awful.”

Lily felt trepidation crawl up her spine. “But not _that_ awful? You can still watch Lyra ‘til Albus is better or Scorpius returns?”

Her mum groaned. “Scorpius already returned. He’s vomiting, too.”

_Oh, fuck. Fuck!_

“No way!” she warned her parents, her heart squeezing with anxiety. She looked between them, panicked. They both looked seconds away from vomiting. “No! I can’t watch Lyra! No, no! I’m calling Uncle Ron!”

“Gone, remember? With Hermione _and_ my parents. For wedding preparation,” Ginny reminded her weakly.

Lily’s eyes widened. Hugo was gone, too. And Aster. And Caden was ill. Oh no.

“Well…well…where are Super Grandads Dean and Seamus?!”

“They’re headed to Grimmauld to watch over Nora, James, and their kids,” Harry said.

Lily snapped her fingers. “Draco! Draco fucking Malfoy!”

Her mum gave her a wary look. “I already spoke with him. He was with Albus and Scorpius earlier. He had some of the chicken. He had to go to work for a meeting, but he left it early…vomiting.”

Lily stamped her foot. “Why did all you people eat the bloody chicken?! What do you expect me to do?!”

Her dad was unable to reply. He jumped up and ran unsteadily towards the nearest toilet. A moment later, the sound of vomiting reached them. Her mum had doubled over at the waist. Lily had spent long enough feeling nauseated to know that her mum was about to vomit. She quickly conjured a sick bucket for her; she grimaced as her mum began vomiting into it seconds later.

“I’m going to call Vic!” Lily decided.

“She’s already seen Scorpius,” her mum said hoarsely. She sat back with a groan. Her hand was shaking as she vanished the contents of the bucket. “Said it was too late for any of us to take the Stomach Cleansing Potion; once you start vomiting, it’s too late. She said 'rest and fluids.'”

Lyra began shrieking. Lily stared at her in horror.

“Mum, I can’t!”

“I need to go lie down,” her mum said. She stood on shaky legs. “Harry, c’mon, let’s go lie down…”

Lily trailed nervously after her parents, Lyra’s cries echoing up the stairs after her.

“Is Luna back yet?!” Lily tried, even though she knew her mum’s friend wasn’t due back for a visit until May.

“No, Lu, and you know that,” her mum reminded her.

“Mum, I don’t know what to do! Dad! I don’t know what to do!”

For a brief moment, she was reminded of her dream. _I don’t have my glasses. I can’t see. I can’t see._ She felt like she didn’t yet have the tools to perform this task, and suddenly being saddled with it when she wasn’t ready was making her panic.

“Just feed her and wind her and rock her and change her,” her dad said quietly. “You’ve got this, Lulu.”

“I don’t! I _do not_ have this! I am so _far_ from having this! I don’t fucking—don’t go to bed,” Lily pleaded. She reached out and grabbed her mum’s hands. “Please, Mum, I can’t watch her.”

“Lily. If you can’t even watch over your niece, I’m really, really worried about you,” her mum said. Lily leaned back, her mum’s words feeling somewhat like a slap. Maybe because she knew she was right.

“I—it’s not that I _can’t_ , it’s that I’m not prepared and…”

Her parents fell down onto their bed.

“You can do it. The bottles are in the fridge. Every couple of hours. You’ll know when she needs to eat again.”

“But—but—I don’t have help and I can’t—”

Lyra’s cries increased in volume significantly. Lily shot a worried look towards the door. What if something had happened to her? Nobody was watching her. Was she allowed to leave a baby alone with nobody watching her? It’s not like she could get up and walk. It was probably okay.

Realizing that her parents were genuinely very unwell and wouldn’t be able to help, Lily sped nervously down the hall. She threw open her bedroom door.

“Caden, I can’t do it,” she greeted, panicked. But he had fallen asleep again. Selfishly, she almost walked over and woke him. She needed his help. She couldn’t do this alone. But she couldn’t get herself to actually walk forward and do it. After a terrifying moment of standing there listening to Lyra shriek, she realized that she was totally and completely fucked and that her only option, for the time being, was to walk down there and deal with it.

* * *

 

Her heart was pounding nearly as loudly as her niece was shrieking.

Lily leaned over and lifted the baby from the basket. She cradled her awkwardly to her chest. She kept shrieking.

“Er…it’s okay,” Lily tried. “Okay, stop crying now. It’s okay.”

Lyra apparently didn’t believe her.

“Erm. Fucking hell. Are you hungry?” Lily guessed. She walked quickly to the kitchen and pulled a bottle from the ice box. She leaned in and offered it to Lyra. The baby accepted it, drank for maybe three seconds, and then began screaming again. Okay. Not a bottle. “Erm…do you need a nappy change?”

Lily lifted Lyra into the air and hesitantly sniffed at her bum. A horrible smell greeted her.

“Fuck! Okay, yes to the nappy change. _Great_.”

She was not feeling confident and it showed. When she set Lyra down on the changing pad, the baby began squirming. 

“Well, I can’t very well change you if you won’t hold still, Lyra! Ugh, okay. Here we go…oh, _gross_.” Lily grimaced and quickly held her breath. She had failed to place a clean nappy at the ready, so in the span of time it took to lift her wand and summon one, Lyra had started squirming again…this time in the nappy mess. “Oh, _bloody hell._ ”

_Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Dragons get covered in poo sometimes. What do you do? Spray them off. Can I spray a baby off? Probably not. Bathe them. Bathe babies. Okay._

She was frozen, trying to decide the _right_ thing to do. What order did she handle this problem in? Did she first get a clean nappy on Lyra in case she went again? Or did she try and wipe her down first? Could she gently wash her off with a bit of water from her wand, just so she didn’t have to touch her poo-covered legs? What about the full nappy—what did she do with that? If she left it, it’d make a bigger mess.

After freezing for a few moments, she decided that she would just do what made sense to her and not worry about the _right thing_. As long as Lyra survived this alive and semi-healthy, Albus and Scorpius never needed to know exactly what happened. She conjured gloves—something she did daily at work—put them on, _carefully_ pulled the soiled nappy free, and then dropped it down into the nearby bin. She pulled the poo-covered sleepsuit off her next. Then, she summoned a large serving platter from the kitchen. She lifted Lyra (remembering to mind her head, thankfully), set her down on the platter, and then quickly sprayed most the poo from her legs and back. The dirty water puddled on the serving platter, keeping the changing area dry and clean. Lyra did _not_ appreciate the cold water.

“I know, I know, sorry,” Lily said, as Lyra’s shrieking increased in volume. “But I can’t leave you covered in feces and this is _beyond_ the scope of a Scourgify. You still need a bath though, right? With soap? You smell like shit. No offense.”

Once Lyra wasn’t covered in it as badly, she lifted her up—still holding her out from her own body—and carried her into the kitchen. She looked around nervously. She couldn’t set Lyra down anywhere, but she needed a hand free to grab a tea towel or get her wand from her pocket. After groaning for a few seconds, she made up her mind. She stepped on the back of her left shoe, pulled it off, stepped on the top of her socks, pulled her foot free from that, and then carefully lifted her leg up. She used her toes and grabbed the tea towel hanging off the counter hook.

“Your dads would go _spare_ if they saw this,” Lily muttered to Lyra. She had at least stopped crying, though her eyes were widened as if she were thinking: _what the fuck is this woman doing?_

Lily dropped the tea towel into the bottom of the empty sink.

“Okay. Um. You can sit on that…and I’ll fill it with a little water…wait, but you can’t sit up…and I can’t leave you lying down in water…I could put this under your head, right, but you’re squirmy, and your head could fall down against the hard sink _and_ you could inhale water… _ugh_ , why are you so fragile?!” After another moment of imagining every possible way she could end up accidentally killing her niece while trying to clean her, Lily turned around. “Fuck it. Nope.”

She held Lyra more securely, now indifferent to the fact that she was getting baby poo germs on herself, stamped her way up the stairs, walked into the bathroom between her room and Albus’s, and turned the bathtub on with a flick of her wand. Three minutes later, she was sitting in the bathtub in her pajamas with Lyra lying somewhat safely on her thighs. She brought her knees up slightly as the water rose so Lyra was held at an incline. Her head was resting just below Lily’s knees and her little feet kicked against the front of Lily’s stomach a few times as they got situated. Once she felt confident that Lyra was both elevated enough that she wouldn’t inhale water _and_ held securely enough, Lily grabbed her flowery-smelling soap from the edge of the tub. She expected Lyra to throw a massive fit, but as she cleaned the poo smell off her niece, Lyra was surprisingly quiet. After Lily had washed her, she cupped the bathwater in her hands and dropped it gently over the baby, washing the last of the soap from her skin. Lyra lay contentedly on Lily’s thighs, seemingly soothed by the warm water, her chubby little hands flailing around almost like she was trying to smack the water with her palms. Lily leaned back, surprised.

“You like this? Seriously?” she demanded.

Her niece hiccupped. Lily felt her heart jolt oddly. “Okay, that was cute.”

She leaned in as much as her stomach would allow and gave herself permission to really look at the baby for the first time. Lyra looked back at her, her grey-green eyes focusing on Lily’s face. Lily reached up and touched the baby’s damp, tousled hair. It looked even redder today, probably because it was wet. Lily gently smoothed it down; she had never felt anything softer in her life. Her heart felt extremely wide.

“You’ve got lovely hair. You’re very welcome for it,” Lily said. To her surprise, her voice had become soft and sweet, as if she were talking to baby dragons. She continued fiddling with Lyra’s hair. She used her palms and pulled it up to create a Mohawk. She laughed loudly, amused. “Now there’s a look for you, Lyra!”

The baby’s hands moved up in jerky, uncoordinated movements. Lily smoothed the Mohawk back down and started twisting her hair in little spirals. A second later, she felt pain erupt over her scalp as Lyra grabbed a handful of her hair. It was spilling over her shoulders and hanging over the baby, so Lily wasn’t sure why she was surprised, but the suddenness (and surprising force!) of the baby’s grip made her inhale sharply.

“Ow! Not the hair!” Lily said. She reached over and pried the baby’s hand from her hair with some difficulty. “No, no!”

Big mistake. Lyra succumbed quickly to shrieking cries. Lily wasted no time lifting the baby’s hand back up to her hair, her eardrums aching from the volume of the baby’s cries. Lyra closed her fist around it as soon as it brushed her tiny palm. Lily leaned back in with a sigh.

“Guess we’re stuck here for a while,” she said, and with Lyra’s hand still around her hair, she went back to playing with Lyra’s soft hair. It didn’t take long for her spine and tailbone to begin to ache, nor for her body to get cold. But the longer she sat there with the baby close to her, the more her heart seemed to swell.

“This isn’t so bad I guess,” Lily realized. She stroked Lyra’s hair with a mindful, gentle touch. Suddenly, the fact that she was so fragile was less annoying and more amazing. She was smiling down at Lyra when the bathroom door opened. She tried to look towards the doorway, but Lyra’s strong grip on her hair kept her from being able to turn her head around fully.

There was a pause. “Lily. _Why_?”

Lily was glad it was Caden. Lyra’s dads would’ve probably had a breakdown to find their precious baby daughter in the bathtub without being strapped eighty times into a thousand-galleon baby bathtub.

“She was covered in shit, and I couldn’t put her in the sink because she can’t sit up, and I have no idea if Mum and Dad have a baby bathtub here or where it would be,” Lily defended. She could just barely see Caden from the corner of her eye; he was watching them in amusement.

“And how’d you expect to get out of the tub by yourself?”

Lily faltered. She _hadn’t_ considered that. She couldn’t get out of the tub anymore without something to hold onto, and she couldn’t exactly hold onto anything with Lyra in her arms.

“I honestly didn’t get that far,” she admitted.

His eyes were soft as he smiled down at Lyra. “I’ll help you out once I brush my teeth. My mouth tastes like vomit.”

“Ew. Yes, please brush them. We’re fine in here.”

After brushing his teeth, he walked over and reached for Lyra. Once she was safe in his arms, Lily grabbed the side of the bath and pulled herself up carefully. She stepped out of the bathtub and then reached out to take Lyra back. Caden arched an eyebrow.

“So you’re no longer terrified of her?” he asked.

“No,” Lily said, her tone once again defensive. She waited as he aimed his wand at her and dried her wet pajamas. She swung her damp hair over her shoulders afterwards. “We’ve got something in common: we both love my hair. Now hand her over, you still look peaky.”

“Don’t you need to get a towel to wrap her in?” he reminded her.

Lily paused. She leaned over and grabbed a towel off the shelf. She opened it up. “Okay. _Now_ hand her over.”

She wrapped Lyra up like a burrito and cradled her in her arms.

“Weren’t you getting me peppermint tea?” Caden reminded her.  

Lily shifted Lyra to her left arm and reached down to smack Caden’s bum. “Don’t get cheeky. You’re not ill enough to get away with that.”

“How ill is ill enough?”

“Dead.”

“Ah.”

Lily leaned in and kissed his lips.

“Minty,” she appreciated. He smiled. “I think I might need to feed this baby, but I can bring tea up afterwards.”

“Nah, I’ll go down with you. The room needs to air out a bit. Vomit.”

“Ew,” she repeated. She held her hand out and wiggled her fingers. “Here, hold my hand so you don’t fall, little one.”

“Shove off.”

Lily never would’ve admitted how much calmer and _better_ she felt now that he was downstairs with her, but it was a remarkable difference. He wasn’t even doing much except sitting at the table, but it helped to have him there. She put the kettle on and then removed the same bottle she’d offered Lyra before from the ice box. She offered it to her again—Lyra spat it out within seconds.

“I think you’ve got to—”

The problem occurred to Lily right as Caden began speaking.

“—heat it up!” she chorused with him. She smacked her forehead. “Right!!”

She jabbed the bottle with her wand. As she held it out to Lyra, she realized at the last possible moment that maybe she ought to check the temperature before letting the baby drink it. She pulled it away; Lyra gave a sharp cry in protest. She flipped the bottle upside down and shook it vigorously. A few scalding drops landed on her forearm.

“Too hot! Definitely too hot!”

She aimed a cooling spell at it. She tested the temperature again.

“Too cold?” she offered it to Lyra. She drank a bit longer, but then let it fall out of her mouth as she began crying again. “Okay, I’m taking that as a yes. Fuck. This is more complicated than I expected. Maybe breastfeeding _is_ easier.”

“Built in warming,” Caden piped up.

“Something I never anticipated would be this much of a fucking issue…okay…let’s try…ten second warming.” She aimed her wand at the bottle for ten seconds this time. She flipped it over. _Still_ too hot. She huffed, frustrated. “Is there like a specific spell for heating baby bottles?!”

The kettle began whistling before she could start trying different spells. She carried the wailing baby over, leaned in to lift the kettle up—

 _No_. She stopped. If she leaned in the way she’d begun to do automatically, the steam would be close enough to Lyra to scald her. Babies and steam…not a good mix. Babies and carrying scalding kettles…not a good mix, either.

She spun around so quickly that she slid a bit on her socks.

“Caden!”

He had his head on the tabletop. He must’ve felt poorly again. “Lil.”

“I think I’ve got _instincts!!”_ she realized.

He lifted his head up. His smile was tired, but Lily could see the affection in his eyes. And she could tell that he wasn’t as surprised as she was.

“‘Course you do,” he said.

“No, _baby_ instincts,” she persisted. “I could’ve accidentally killed her loads of times already, but I _didn’t_. And I’m probably not doing it the way Albus and Scorpius do. But she’s alive and she smells clean! And, you know what—fuck it!” With a burst of confidence, she grabbed the bottle and shoved it down her shirt, so it was sitting on her protruding stomach, the fabric of her shirt keeping it from toppling off. “I’ll warm it with body heat! Sorted!”

Caden snorted. He turned and hid his face back into his arms, his laughter muffled into them. It seemed to grow in strength the longer it went on, and soon Lily was laughing along with him. The bottle bounced atop her belly as she did.

“I don’t think I’ll _ever_ have a boring day ever again,” he muttered to himself.

“…What…is…going on?”

 _Uh oh._ Lily spun around to face the doorway. Albus looked _horrible_ ; his face was unnaturally pale, his hair was sticking up in a thousand different directions, his clothes were twisted and wrinkled. His eyes flickered between Lyra and Lily.

“I’m babysitting!” Lily said. She pulled the collar of her shirt down to expose part of the bottle. “Trying to get the temperature right.”

“I— _what_? Lily, where are Mum and Dad?!”

Lily pointed vaguely towards the upper floors as soon as Albus had pulled Lyra from her arms. “Vomiting.”

He groaned. “The chicken.”

“Oh, yeah. The chicken. You poisoned my boyfriend, too, look.” Lily pointed towards the table.

“I’m sorry, Caden,” Albus said, embarrassed. “Scorpius was dancing with Lyra and it was so adorable and I just…got distracted.”

“It’s okay,” Caden said, very kindly in Lily’s opinion. She wasn’t sure she’d be as kind if she’d been vomiting up her guts because of Albus’s negligence. But then again, she’d been vomiting up her guts for months because of _Scorpius’s_ negligence, and she hadn’t yelled at him much, so maybe she was nicer than she thought she was.

Albus kissed Lyra’s cheeks. “Hello, pumpkin,” he cooed sweetly. "Papa and I missed you.”

Lily looked over at Caden and rolled her eyes.

As Albus was checking Lyra’s nappy, he paused. He sniffed her quite theatrically.

“Lily?”

“Yeah?”

“Why does Lyra smell like this? Flowery?”

“Oh, we had a bath. Albus, I think this might be a good temperature now, here you go.” She pulled the bottle free and held it out. He looked a bit reluctant to take it, but Lyra’s cries persuaded him. Lily felt a bit smug as Lyra accepted the bottle with no fuss.

“A _bath_? What do you mean ‘we had a bath’?” Albus demanded, confused. “And, for the record, Lily, you can heat bottles the normal way with your wand. You don’t have to use human body heat…have you read _any_ childcare books?”

“Nope. I might later if I feel like it. I’ve got to finish my arson book first, though,” she replied.

Albus almost looked afraid to ask. “Did you put my newborn in the bathtub?”

“Not _alone_ —I’m not a complete idiot. I got in with her. She was covered in shit. I had to wash her.”

“Why was she covered in shit?!”

“Things happen, Albus!”

Lily thought that was a sufficient answer. She turned and began making Caden’s tea. Albus wasn’t satisfied.

“What _thing_ happened specifically?”

She sighed. She turned around to face her brother once the tea was steeping.

“I was changing her nappy, the poo got _all over her_ because she was squirming around and such, I thought leaving her covered in poo was probably a bad idea—with dragons, if you leave feces on them, it can get between and underneath their scales and cause Scale Rot which can lead to infections so bad their limbs have to be amputated and sometimes even organ toxicity—”

“Lily. I want you to listen _very, very carefully._ Dragons. Are not. Humans.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “So it’s fine to just leave human babies covered in their own feces?”

“I—no, of course that’s not okay, it could make them ill—”

“Exactly. So shut up.”

“ _But_ you shouldn’t have a newborn in the regular bathtub and you have to be careful about what sort of soaps you use! Was it a Muggle soap? Because Muggles put all sorts of chemicals in their products.”

“No, it was the soap Gran makes! What would _you_ have done, then, if my response was so awful?”

“I would’ve put the _baby bathtub_ in the sink, gently washed her off with _her own soap_ , dried her, and then redressed her.”

Lily refused to believe she’d done anything wrong. “I didn’t know where any of that stuff was. I achieved the same exact end result. She’s fine. You’ve got to lighten up.”

Albus scoffed. “You babysit my child once and suddenly _you’re_ the baby expert?”

“Okay,” Caden interrupted firmly. Lily had already clenched her hands into fists without realizing it, and any sort of confidence or excitement she’d felt had disappeared, leaving a vaguely heavy-hearted feeling in its place. Caden stepped between the two siblings. “Albus, Lily took care of her all alone, and she did a good job. You need to lay off. She might do things her own way in her own style, but Lyra is fine. Not a hair is out of place.”

Albus looked down at Lyra. Caden hadn’t picked the best phrase; Lyra’s hair had dried in a sort of a half-Mohawk from when Lily played with it in the bath.

“You know what I mean,” Caden said, catching on to Albus’s train of thought. “She’s perfectly fine.”  

Part of Lily wanted to say _I’m the reason she’s even here in the first place, so it’s shit for you to criticize me for something as small as where I bathed her,_ but she knew it would cause a _massive_ row, one that would almost certainly lead to flying fists, and she probably shouldn’t fist fight while pregnant with twins.

Thankfully, Albus seemed to decide to let it go, too. He nodded once.

“Thanks for watching her, Lily. And just so you know: Mum keeps the Den’s baby supplies in the wardrobe in James’s old room.”

Lily nodded back. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to be genuinely helpful or sassy, but for one of the first times in her life, she was certain the argument she could cause by snapping back wouldn’t be worth the energy it’d cost her. “Okay, Al. Thanks for only poisoning the things I don’t eat.”

* * *

 

Her birthday arrived the following week on the heels of yet another nightmare. She woke with a gasp around dawn and lay on her back for a few minutes, struggling to catch her breath. Like the others she’d had, it was so vivid that the details stuck with her long after waking. She was still thinking about it in mute panic as she felt her boyfriend scoot over to curl his body around hers.

“Happy birthday. You’re finally my age. We’ll see if you act like it,” he murmured.

Lily half-heartedly kicked behind her, catching his calf with her heel. She would’ve liked to have jumped right into their morning banter/sex, but her heart was still pounding in her chest.

“I had _another_ nightmare,” she said. Her voice sounded small even to her own ears. He draped an arm over her waist and let his palm fall against the side of her stomach. He scooted just a bit closer to her. She leaned automatically into his kiss as he pressed his lips to her cheek.

“Did you forget your Sleeping Draught?” he asked. She’d been taking it nightly the past week to avoid her vivid dreams. Most of them were just strange—not every one was a nightmare—but after two days of dreams so colorful and _real_ that they left her feeling exhausted upon waking, she got sick of it.

“No. I didn’t forget. I just didn’t take it,” she admitted.

“Why not?”

She pulled the blanket up higher against the draft of the room. “It makes the babies stop moving.”

“I thought you _wanted_ them to stop moving so much at night. You always say it’s annoying,” he reminded her.

“Well, yeah, it is annoying. Sometimes it’s even _really_ annoying. But it frightens me when they don’t.” She didn’t add that all her nightmares involved something happening to them (with it usually being her fault.)

He swept her hair off her neck and pressed his lips to her skin. She shivered slightly and arched back into his body, eliminating any semblance of space between them.

“Shall I make you forget the nightmare?” he asked. His words were warm against her skin.

“I dunno…it was a pretty bad one…” she said. She turned her face slightly and hid her grin into her pillow. He kissed the back of her neck; his lips brushed her skin with each word that followed.

“Then it’ll just have to be really great sex.”

“You sound a bit sure of yourself.”

“I absolutely am.”

“Prove it.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Or a threat. You decide.”

“I’m shaking in fright.”

“Not saying much coming from you.”

“Yeah, well, I think we’ll be hearing a lot from _you_ in a moment.”

“Yeah—complaints.”

He’d slid a hand beneath her clothes during their bantering. Her pleased intake of breath earned her a cocky-sounding laugh.

“Doesn’t sound like complaining to me.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

They had nearly perfected amping up their arguing during sex to take the place of their pre-pregnancy roughness, and Lily was quite enjoying the mental stimulation, but there was still a part of her that missed the wildness of before (and the occasional bruises—they’d always felt like trophies.) Their sex life had gotten better and better each day as they found ways to work around the limitations of her pregnancy, and on that day—perhaps as the universe’s way of saying _happy birthday, Lily_ —she was certain it had _never_ been better. They were swearing at each other with strangely affectionate venom near the end of it, and Lily had never before heard the words _fuck you!_ as _I love you more than anything_ before, but the translation was crystal clear.

She was happy to snuggle up afterwards, feeling even more affectionate than usual. She pressed her cheek over his heart as he gently pulled his fingers through her tangled hair.  She was so at ease that she hardly jumped as she heard the bedroom door click open.

“I’m not coming in,” her mum reassured them.

“A wise decision,” Lily said.

“I’ve been knocking for ages. Did you cast a silencing spell?”

Lily glanced up and exchanged a look with Caden. He seemed equally unsure how to answer that.

“Er…perhaps,” Lily said. “What did you need?”

“Your dad wants to know what you want to eat for your birthday breakfast. He’s afraid he’ll make something you don’t like the taste of anymore.”

Lily pondered that. “I want…eggs on toast…cheese tarts…firewhisky coffee—damn. Okay, a _latte_ — and lemon pavlova.” 

There was a pause. “You know, James asked for a pizza last year for his birthday breakfast.”

“Then James isn’t very confident in Dad’s love for him. Plus I’m nurturing two entire lives, Mum. _Two_. Maybe Iris wants the cheese tarts and Elliot wants the pavlova. We just don't know.”

"I'm not an expert, but I don't think it works like that," Caden whispered. Lily stuck her tongue out at him. 

“I wondered when you’d start playing the Twin Card. Nice work,” her mum said. Lily could hear the amused smile in her voice. “Happy birthday, love. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Mum. Thanks.”

“I won’t interrupt your very important work with dragons, but try to make it downstairs in an hour or so; Uncle Ron will be here soon and he’ll eat all the food.”

Lily snickered, amused. She was too relaxed to feel embarrassed. “Noted, Mum.”

After her mum had shut the door—enveloping them once again in silence—Caden asked: “Work with dragons?”

“A nickname for your—” she made a vague gesture downwards, her movements sleepy. He feigned an affronted gasp. She was giggling as he carefully flipped them over and lightly pinned her to the mattress. He kissed her hard, his own lips curled up in amusement.

“I actually hate you,” he said.

“I hate you right back,” she grinned.

“How would you feel if I talked about our sex life with…” he trailed off. “Delphi?”

“Eh. Sure. Give her some excitement. And make sure Evangeline is in the room so she’ll repeat everything you say at really awkward moments.” 

Lily had settled back down into his arms after a brief snogging break, and when she felt those now-familiar movements in her belly, she reached at once for Caden’s hand. She dragged it over and pressed it hard over the spot she felt the strongest movements. She waited hopefully. _It’s my birthday, c’mon, alien babies_ , she thought _._ She felt a fairly strong kick. And then she felt Caden’s fingers flex, almost in surprise.

“Did you feel that?!” she asked excitedly. His hand pressed harder against her stomach in response. She hoped and hoped and then—one of the babies kicked out again. Caden’s laugh was bursting with affection and Lily couldn’t help but laugh along just as happily.

“I felt that!” he told her. He rubbed over the spot he’d felt them kick, his words full of wonder. “Merlin, that’s weird and amazing.”

“It is!” she said, pleased that he could finally at least sort of understand. “Last scan the baby on this side was Elliot, but I think they’re still moving positions a lot, so it might not be now. Could be Iris. I’d like to know which one is already kicking my ribs, ‘cause I feel like it’s pretty early for them to be so good at it.”

“They probably take turns,” he admitted.

“You’re probably right.”

Their silence was warm and impossibly cozy. Lily—somebody who normally went mad whenever she spent more than eight hours in bed—could have happily remained there all day.

“They’re going to love you so much,” he told her. He didn’t need to clarify. Lily’s heart skipped a beat.

“I hope so,” she admitted.

“I _know_ so.”

* * *

 

Her dad’s birthday breakfast was so wonderful that Lily was nearly moved to tears. She enjoyed every bite of what was on her plate, and considering her diet had become so limited due to her pickiness, it was exciting to finally enjoy a meal where _everything_ was delicious and to her liking. Not everybody seemed to think the combination of items made sense, but to Lily, it was perfect. And to her little Mini Me Finnigan, it was _nearly_ perfect.

“My birthday is in _three days_ ,” Finnigan reminded Harry. “And I want all of this, except I want beans on my toast instead of eggs and _no_ cheese tarts and also all kinds of apples. Okay, Harry?! Can I, Harry?!”

Harry reached over and patted Finnigan’s curls. “Absolutely.”

Lily leaned over towards Albus. “Who’s going to tell Finnigan that pavlova has eggs?”

Albus snorted. “Dad’ll probably find a way to make it without them. Finnigan’s got him wrapped around his finger.”

“All of them do!” Lily corrected. “Including your daughter.”

Albus beamed. “Especially my daughter.”

Lily finished her breakfast, spent some time getting harassed (with love) by her nieces and nephews, and then she and Caden left for Diagon Alley to meet up with Hugo and Aster (who, unfortunately, were stuck at work for the day, with it being a weekday and all.) At Hugo’s bakery, Lily was treated to an open invitation to “eat whatever you like” from Hugo. Sadly, she was already stuffed from breakfast, but she took a handful of chocolates anyway and munched halfheartedly on them as she and Caden moved to Aster’s shop. It was incredibly packed—as it always was, thanks to Aster’s synthetic dragon scale line that had taken off rather quickly after a few prolific witches and wizards were photographed wearing pieces from the line—but it ended up working in Lily’s favor, as she mostly blended in with the crowd. She’d concealed her hair beneath a witch’s hat to protect her identity; her hair was her most recognizable feature, and without it in plain view, nobody looked twice at the pregnant witch.

She was able to take the hat off as soon as they moved up the stairs towards the studio space above Aster’s shop. Lily dropped the hat to the floor.

“ _Hate_ hats,” she reminded Caden and Hugo.

“Just be glad you’re not going to be on the cover of _Witch Weekly_ tomorrow,” Hugo reminded her fairly. Lily shuddered.

Aster was able to sneak away for her lunch break a few minutes later and join them upstairs. Lily beamed as her friend immediately threw her arms around her.

“Happy birthday!!” Aster cheered. She pulled back and leaned over Lily’s stomach. Lily hardly minded as she pressed a loud kiss to her belly. “Happy almost birthday to you two, too, Iris and Elliot!”

“Not _almost_ ,” Lily corrected, her heart squeezing nervously from that comment. “They aren’t due ‘til August!”

Aster waved her hand. “Eh, it’ll be August in the blink of an eye.”

Lily turned and exchanged a quick, wide-eyed look with Caden, but she didn’t have the chance to indulge her sudden nervousness because Aster insisted on bombarding her with maternity clothes and—surprisingly— _baby clothes_. Caden laughed, amused and overjoyed. He lifted up the first item she’d revealed: an impossibly tiny pinafore dress made of soft, emerald cotton with tiny, metallic dragons enchanted to blow little puffs of silver glitter every few seconds.

“That is _fucking brilliant_ ,” he praised. He showed Lily. She liked it so much that she could hardly sit still.

“Fuck _yes_! Aster! I didn’t know you were making baby clothes now!” She stroked her hand over the soft material. It was so cuddly that she felt her heart ache with longing; for a second, she could clearly image cuddling a baby in this soft dress. For the first time, she wanted to terribly. It had to be the hormones.

“I’m not! Just for the twins. They’re going to get their own personalized lines every year because I love them so much. Look—for Elliot!” Aster held up a tiny dungaree set. The cotton was a rich ruby this time, but it had the same metallic dragons as Iris’s dress. The dragons’ ‘smoke’ was golden glitter this time. Lily was visibly squirming, unable to keep herself from leaning forward and immediately pulling that one into her arms, too. It was, quite possibly, the most adorable thing she had ever seen. She had never expected to be the person fawning over infant clothes.

“Aster,” she realized, the full extent of her ridiculous emotional reaction registering. “Aster. I think I want a top just like this. I think I want to fucking match them. Merlin’s wrinkly bollocks…what is _wrong_ with me?!”

“The power of design,” Aster said wisely. She and Hugo exchanged a quick look, and then, with an excited giggle, she held up a halter top with a matching pattern. She had already made it (had already anticipated what Lily would want.) Lily struggled to stand so she could seize her friend in a hug, but Aster bounced over and sat on Lily’s knees so she didn’t have to. They hugged each other so tightly that it was nearly painful.

“Oh, I love you,” Lily told her, her eyes burning. She didn’t know why it had affected her so much, but for whatever reason, the baby clothes had made her feel that much closer to the babies, that much more connected. She nuzzled her cheek against Aster’s soft hair. “Did you make Caden one, too?”

“Of _course_ I did,” Aster promised. She leaned back and grinned. She stroked Lily’s hair back; Lily guessed it looked a bit wild because of the evil hat she’d had to wear. “Yours isn’t a maternity top, but I’ve made some other really great ones for you to wear until the babies are here—including an outfit for the concert next week! Let me show you.”

There were no maternity clothes that could make Lily feel comfortable in her changing skin—nor any that could make her like her pregnant body even one third as much as she liked her regular one—but she had to admit that Aster’s designs were comfortable and flattering in ways that almost made her excited to wear them. While she and Aster worked their way through all the clothes she’d been steadily making just for her—including a wonderful off-shoulder top made of black silk with bubbling cauldrons embroidered in every shade that really looked nice with Lily’s tattoos—Hugo and Caden laughed and _aww_ ed their way through the rest of the baby clothes Aster had made, like a pair of adorable expectant housewives.

“We’re a bit too cool for them,” Lily commented to Aster. “Did you know Caden stalks birds for fun?”

Aster giggled. “You’ve mentioned it a couple hundred times. Hugo’s obsessed with kitchen organization. He’s got all his ingredients in muggle containers labeled perfectly; he reorders both his bakery kitchen and the flat kitchen every Saturday. Sometimes Rose or Hermione help and it’s like this little Granger ritual…it’s really sort of cute. Ron and Iset and I just sit on the counter usually and eat whatever sweets are left over from the past week.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Lily snorted.

Aster peered at the boys thoughtfully. “Maybe they’re just too sweet for us.”

Lily glanced over at them. Privately, she was very aware that Caden was probably too good for her, but she’d never admit that out loud.

“Hugo’s definitely too sweet for anybody but you _._ You know, now that I think about it, the bakery thing was very fitting,” Lily said.

Aster gasped. Her hand settled over her mouth; her engagement ring sparkled lightly in the candlelight. “My God, you’re right. Hugo is the bakery…the bakery is Hugo…!”

Giggling, the two leaned over to set Lily’s birthday gift nicely to the side. Aster helped Lily to her feet and linked their arms together.

“C’mon, let’s ditch them,” she said. “Coffee on me.”

“That’s the best sort of coffee there is,” Lily said happily. She crammed her hat on her head, lightly smacked Caden’s shoulder by way of goodbye, and followed Aster down the narrow steps. “I saw the Harpies’ new Keeper wearing one of your dragon scale gowns on the cover of _Witch Weekly_ last week.”

“Yeah! She looked _lovely_ , didn’t she?!” Aster agreed. The crowds in her shop parted for them as they made their way through. Aster stopped by a middle-aged woman and helped direct her to the style she was looking for and then caught back up with Lily at the shop door. “Did you know the number of newly-infected people with lime pox was at an all-time low this month? Only ten people. _Ten_!”

“Ten idiots who don’t give a shit about dragons or their suffering. Ten idiots who ignored every single advert, mail pamphlet, Healer warning, and government order to stay away from poached products,” Lily grumbled.

“Still, it’s brilliant that it’s slowed on that front. Now they’ve just got to deal with the people who already have it.”

Aster claimed an outside table in front of the coffee shop next door to Hugo’s bakery.

“They should put me on the case,” Lily said, mostly teasing. She lifted the menu and eyed the café’s specialty drinks. “I cured blindness and poor eyesight before I was even eighteen. I’ll fix their naughty lime pox.”

Aster didn’t giggle. Lily glanced up. Aster was looking at her seriously.

“That’s a thought,” Aster said. “I know you haven’t done much related to potion creation since you started your sanctuary—”

“I literally have _no time_ for a hobby as time-consuming as that,” Lily reminded Aster. “There are some days where having time to get a bath in is a wonderful surprise.”

“Right, I know,” Aster reassured her. She paused and smiled at the waiter as he stopped to take their orders. Once they’d decided what they wanted, Aster continued. “But you can’t do as much now, right? With the twins?”

Lily paused. “Not really. I mean, I’m still working full days in the office—there’s so much paperwork _constantly_ , not to mention the letters—but I can’t go out in the field even half as much as I’d like.”

Aster leaned in and lowered her voice. “What if you used your extra time to get back into your old hobby? We’re not meant to know for sure, but I’m almost positive that James’s friend Evvie is one of the Unspeakables who’s working on the cure.”

Lily felt wary. “She’s not likely to tell me anything even if she is. And the DOM isn’t going to let some random person start working on their top-secret shit.”

“Of course not,” Aster agreed. “They’re ridiculously secretive. But who says you need their permission to work on it?”

Lily warmed up a bit to what Aster was suggesting. “You mean do it myself? Behind their backs?”

Aster shushed her. A second later, their waiter returned. Aster peered at Lily coyly as she leaned in and took a sip of her iced coffee.

“I’m saying you work with dragons and have a seemingly endless supply of lime pox samples. I’m saying you’re clever and stubborn. I’m saying you’re about to have quite a lot of time on your hands. You could try to get information from James about how far they’ve gotten in the DOM, and then you could take it from there. They’re the experts on diseases, but you know dragons, and this is something that originated in dragons, so I think you ought to at least take a real look at it.”

Lily lifted her cappuccino carefully. She considered Aster’s idea as she took a scalding sip.

“I think Caden would have a genuine heart attack,” she finally said. “He’s already worried about my safety apparently. He didn’t tell me, but I heard him talking to my dad about it. Imagine if I told him I was going to start purposefully coming in contact with lime pox-infected dragons while I’m pregnant. All it would take would be _one_ mistake. One poorly-cast skin-shielding spell, one pair of ripped gloves, one dropped vial.” Lily hadn’t felt certain about much during this pregnancy, but she was certain about this. “I can’t risk that. I can’t risk them.”

“No, you’re right,” Aster agreed. She sighed and shook her head. “It’s too risky.”

Still, her curiosity had been roused. What _were_ they doing in the DOM?

“Now _researching_ it…and playing around with different ideas, just without actually handling lime pox samples… _that_ I can do,” Lily said.

Aster grinned. Lily mirrored it.

“If you break into the DOM, I want in,” Aster said.

“Of _course_.”

* * *

 

Caden and Hugo were lounging on the sofa in Aster’s shop studio with pints from a local brewery. Lily stopped in place so abruptly that her box of cupcakes—taken from Hugo’s bakery—fell right out of her hands. Aster caught it right before it hit the floor, but that did little to improve Lily’s rapidly plummeting mood.

“You _traitor_!” Lily exclaimed. Caden—catching sight of them—quickly began chugging what was left, but Lily was across the room and thrown across his lap in seconds. She wrestled the glass from his hands. She gasped. “Marshmallow Sriracha! You know I’ve been wanting to try that one!”

“You’re in trouble now,” Hugo whispered to Caden. Without looking his way, Lily reached over and smacked Hugo in the gut with the back of her hand. He groaned.

“I thought I could finish it before you got back,” Caden admitted. “I wasn’t trying to taunt you, honest.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. She shifted in his lap and looped her arms around his neck. “Here I am, horribly and miserably pregnant with our twins, and you’re here stabbing me in the back over and over and over and over and over again!”

“Would you like a taste?” he offered, clearly trying to make peace. “There’s still a tiny bit left.”

She groaned. “I _can’t_!”

“One sip won’t hurt anything.”

“Maybe for normal people. Things that shouldn’t statistically happen to other people happen to me. No way.”

“Okay…your choice,” he shrugged. Lily pouted as he lifted the glass and drained the rest of it. A moment or two later, his hands grasped her face, gentle and imploring. Lily leaned into his touch. His lips met hers, parting at once, and as Lily deepened the kiss, she tasted an interesting burst of spices and sweetness, both cocooned inside the bitterness of the beer. It was odd and a bit overbearing, but she thoroughly enjoyed it. She could’ve snogged him all night, but she didn’t want to make Aster and Hugo uncomfortable, so she pulled back soon afterwards.

“Well?” he asked.

She frowned. “I love it.”

He gently pulled her glasses from her face. Lily hadn’t noticed they were as dirty and smudged as they were until he replaced them after wiping the lenses; the world was much clearer.

“We’ll get _loads_ of it after the babies are here,” he promised her quietly. He reached up and swept her hair back. “Okay?”

Lily nodded. “Okay. Deal. But you’re buying!”

“Deal.”

Lily became aware of Hugo and Aster’s suspicious whispering. When she turned around to look at them, they fell silent. Hugo gently nudged Aster. Aster made a face at him. Lily arched an eyebrow.

“What?” she demanded.

Hugo hesitated. “Well…we were wondering if we could possibly stay with you two during our honeymoon.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “Hugo, you’re going to Cozumel. We don’t live in Cozumel.”

“We’re not going there anymore,” Aster explained. Lily frowned. “The venue ended up costing us more than we expected. We can’t afford to really go anywhere now…and we were thinking, if you two will have us, we could afford to have a really nice time in New Zealand if only we had some place to stay for free. We’ll pay for our own food and everything but—”

“But you’ve been to New Zealand loads of times,” Lily reminded Aster. “That’s not special. Why was the venue more than you expected?”

“They upped the prices,” Hugo said miserably. “We can’t prove it, but we think they upped them because of who my mum is…they thought they could get more from us.”

“It’s the one place everybody agrees on—my family and Hugo’s. So we’re sort of stuck. And we refuse to take money from our families. What do you think? Would that be okay? Us staying with you?”

“Of course you can stay with us,” Caden reassured them. “Right, Lil?”

Lily had to force a smile on her face. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Aster and Hugo visiting…it was just that Aster had been really looking forward to her Cozumel trip. “For as long as you want.”

Aster beamed. “Thank you.”

“Thank you _so much_ ,” Hugo agreed. He leaned in and kissed Aster happily, not a pout in sight despite the extremely unfair circumstances that had cost them the trip they’d been dreaming about for months. Lily stared at them in disbelief. There was no fucking way she was letting her cousin and her best friend have anything short of their dream honeymoon, and if _she_ had to throw their tantrums _for them_ , she would.

They spent another hour chatting, gathered Lily’s gifts, said their goodbyes, and then Lily did her best to get Caden into the Floo with her.

“C’mon, let’s go together,” Lily said.

Caden stared at her. “It’s not a two-person Floo. We won’t fit.”

She reached out and grabbed his forearm. She tugged. “So? C’mon…”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because,” she said.

“Because…?”

“Because I’m going somewhere other than the Den and if I tell you where I’m going first— so that you can go separately— you might try to talk me out of it! Get in the Floo, Caden!”

“Why do I have the suspicion this is all going to end with a visit to either St. Mungo’s or an Auror’s office?”  

She yanked on his arm. “Get—in—the—Floo!”

He doubled over at the waist and squeezed into the space beside her. “This is thoroughly uncomfortable.”

“You’ll survive.” Lily threw down a handful of Floo powder while saying the name of the venue Aster and Hugo were scheduled to be married at. The last thing she saw was Caden’s wary look.

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you purposefully tripped over that man’s shoe, faked labor pains, and then threatened to call your dad.”

Lily shook the soot out from her hair and then reached up to brush it from Caden’s. “Really? You can’t believe I did that?”

“Okay. Let me rephrase: I can’t believe you got away with it,” he corrected. Lily waited as he brushed ash from her shoulders. “I’ve never seen a man go that pale.”

“He really thought his life was over,” Lily snickered. “You did a great job. The fake tears were a nice touch.”

He bowed. “I’m a great manipulator.”

“Anyway, the important thing is that Aster and Hugo will get the price they deserve and will have enough to go on the honeymoon of their dreams. The nerve of that man…marking up his prices nearly three hundred percent just because Hugo is the son of the Minister…not everybody wants to take money from their parents, even if their parents have decent jobs.”

“Are we telling Aster and Hugo about your meddling?”

“Fuck no. We take it to the grave,” Lily ordered. She stepped into the sitting room. She grinned. “Hey! Lyra! Hey, Lyra!”

She walked over and fell down onto the sofa beside Scorpius. He smiled at her and turned Lyra around so Lily could see her. She leaned in and lovingly patted her hair. “How’s it going?”

The baby stared back at her. Lily nodded. “That’s nice.”

Lily had dinner at the Burrow—complete with one of her Gran’s magnificent cakes—and then she opened her gifts. When she got to her mum and dad’s, they reached out and set their hands on hers, stilling her progress.

“There’s more to it,” her mum told her. “Read the card first.”

Lily felt over a dozen sets of eyes on her as she ripped the paper back on her mum and dad’s present. She pulled out a card in a pale orange envelope. She opened it to her dad’s slightly-messy handwriting.

_By the time you came around, I thought I knew everything there was to know about parenting. You proved me wrong. Every day with you has been an adventure and I wouldn’t have missed a day of it. You’re blessed to be so loved, but always know that nobody loves you as much as I do. I know you’re a lot more frightened than you let on…but know that everything is going to be just fine. There’s nothing you can’t handle. I love you now and forever – Dad_

And beneath it, in her mother’s handwriting:

_Nobody loves you as much as Dad except Mum. Every day I’m thankful for my clever, wonderful daughter who never fails to make me laugh. You’ve made me a very lucky mum and you’ll make your twins very lucky children. Your dad and I hope you like your gift. We didn’t watch the memory—we only had Gantha assure us that the prediction was positive—but she said it was painfully adorable. I hope this brings you peace of mind and stops the nightmares. Happy birthday, Lulu – Mum _

Equal amounts curious and excited, Lily set the card to the side and pulled out a tiny box. As she eased the top off and saw a familiar looking orb, she initially felt a bit disappointed. She pulled the portable pensieve out and held it in her hand. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t the gift her brother had already gotten years and years ago.

“Thanks,” she told her parents. She smiled at them. “It’s lovely.”

“It’s the _best_ thing to have, Lily,” Scorpius told her eagerly. “Every new parent should have one without a doubt.”

She squeezed the ball. It was slightly squishy. “Yeah, I bet. Thanks a lot, Mum and Dad. I love you.”

“We had Gantha record a memory of one of her predictions for your future, Lu,” her mum explained. “We think she probably knows what she’s talking about, at least a bit; she’s had quite a few spot-on predictions thus far—I don’t need your input, thank you, Rose.”

Lily glanced to the side. Rose swallowed whatever she’d been about to say. Rose and her mum shared a somewhat skeptical look.

“To watch it later, you need to place your hand on it and hold it there for two minutes,” Ginny continued. “If you want Caden to watch it with you, have him place his hand beside yours.”

It was difficult for Lily to focus on the rest of the celebrations. Her intrigue grew and grew with each passing moment. By the time she and Caden returned to her bedroom at the Den, she couldn’t wait a second longer, not even for Caden to change out of his clothes.

“I want to watch it now,” she said impatiently.

He paused, one leg still in his trousers. “Can I at least fully undress first?”

“Hurry!!”

He pulled his trousers off and walked over to sit on the edge of the bed beside her. Lily held the orb in her palm. She moved her hand over. Right as Caden was about to set his on it, she twisted her wrist and unfurled her fingers, letting the orb fall to her lap.

“Wait, I don’t know,” she said, her heart suddenly pounding. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“So…can I brush my teeth, or…”

Lily fiddled with her rings. “But Mum said it was something good. And maybe it’s something Gantha made up; maybe it’s not even really the future, so there’s nothing to worry about. What do you think? Should we watch it?”

He finished unbuttoning his shirt and pulled it off. He considered Lily’s question for much longer than Lily would’ve liked; she had to bite her tongue to keep from rushing his decision.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s your gift and it’s your decision. Do you _want_ to watch it?”

Automatically: “Yes. I do.” Her heart jolted. “Oh—fuck it! We’re doing this. Let’s do it.”

“Really?” he said, surprised. “Okay. You’re sure?”

In response, Lily reached out and set her hand half on top of his and half on the orb. It was one of the longest two minutes of her life. She waited anxiously, unsure what to expect. Her vision was so poor that when things started blurring, she hardly noticed it.

“Whoa,” Caden said quickly, alarmed. He went to pull his hand off the orb by instinct, but Lily grabbed onto his fingers before he could.

“What?” Lily asked quickly. “What’s wrong?”

“My eyes are going all blurry…are yours?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, maybe, I think so… _whoa_.” Her vision went from blurry to jet black. For a second, she had a momentary flashback to the first pregnancy nightmare she’d had, the one where she’d gone blind in the ocean, and she felt a wave of nausea. But after a moment, the darkness diffused; she saw, through somebody else’s eyes—presumably Gantha’s—a crystal ball. Inside of it, growing larger with each passing moment, tiny, moving figures. Lily leaned forward, as if to get a better look at the crystal ball, but because she was merely seeing a memory and couldn’t change how Gantha acted in the past, her angle of vision didn’t change at all.

“Weird,” Lily said. She shook her head back and forth, but her vision remained steady. “What’s in the crystal ball?”

“I dunno, I’m seeing exactly what you’re seeing,” Caden reminded her. “We’ve got to be patient.”

“ _No_ , I refuse,” she grumbled.

Gantha moved in closer to the crystal ball, bringing their sight closer to the figures in the murky glass. Lily squirmed impatiently; she felt Caden’s free hand settle on her thigh, gripping it tightly. Her own red hair was the first thing she saw as the image of a beach (probably one close to their home in New Zealand) drew nearer. Lily examined herself closely as the scene in the crystal ball filled her mind’s eye. Her hair was six inches past her shoulders, vivid, and wavy from the humidity. She currently owned the swimsuit she was wearing.

“Ha!” Lily hissed, pleased. She knocked into Caden’s side blindly. “I’m hot again. See that? Where are you?”

“I see _exactly_ what you see,” Caden reminded her again. He slid his hand up her thigh. “Nice arse.”

“Thanks. I agree.”

In the future, she settled down on a beach mat on her stomach. Lily watched her future self squint off towards the waves. Her heart jolted with excitement; she assumed Caden was somewhere near the water. She stared precisely where her future self was staring. The sun dancing off the waves was painful to look at; both present Lily and future Lily winced and lifted a hand to shield their eyes. And then, as they were both wincing, two small figures came out of nowhere from the opposite direction and leapt directly on Lily’s back. Lily, both in the present and future, jumped. But while present Lily watched on in confusion, future Lily fell into bright laughter (laughter the two children echoed in giggles.)

“I think that’s our kids,” Lily blurted.

“Or somebody’s doing a shit job keeping an eye on theirs.”

She scooted forward on the bed and grew frustrated when changing her position didn’t make the scene any clearer or closer. She wanted to see the kids better. She wanted to see their faces. Right now all she could see was their profile and their golden red hair, shining in the sun.

“This is so _frustrating_ ,” she complained. “Lean in, Gantha!”

Future Lily poked at the kids’ tummies until they rolled off of her back, and once they had, she turned over. Lily’s heart swelled as she watched herself open her arms wide, inviting and expecting, and not even a full second later, the kids fell down on top of her. They cuddled up close, their sand-caked legs intertwining with Lily’s and their arms draping over each other.

“Looks like they’re ours,” Lily said, her voice oddly hushed (as if they were witnessing something sacred.)

It appeared to be nap time. Elliot wove his fingers into her hair and yawned. Iris was either singing or murmuring something beneath her breath as she settled down to sleep. Future Lily rubbed their tiny backs in calming circles, and it was a moment of such utter peace that Lily felt her present self growing sleepy and content alongside them. There was only one problem.

“But where are you?” Lily asked, troubled. Her heart had been full to bursting a second ago, but as the seconds droned on, it sank further and further. The twins were tiny, probably only barely two; Lily would have _never_ agreed to take them to the beach alone.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sounded just as worried as Lily did.

Another minute passed. Lily felt her eyes growing hot. Her mind was filled with horrible fears. Had he died? Left her? Packed up his things and cut his losses? She was genuinely nearing terrified tears when she spotted his hair, golden in the sun and every bit as valuable. She let out a huge breath of relief as he fell down onto the picnic blanket beside future Lily, looking even more handsome than he did now. He passed Lily some sort of alcoholic drink. Lily in the future smiled happily; Lily in the present let out an overjoyed laugh.

“ _There_ you are!” she cried happily.

“Ah. I was getting you alcohol. Of _course._ Why am I not surprised…”

“Oh, shut it,” Lily chided. “You got yourself one, too. It looks like we’re having fun.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. Lily could hear his smile. “Looks like we are.”

Lily beamed as their future selves shared a deep, lingering kiss. She didn’t know if it was just because she was so relieved to see him, or maybe because the sun was hitting his face in just the right way, but when he smiled, she felt herself grow a bit weak in the knees.

She had thought that the twins were asleep, but as Caden leaned over Lily and kissed the tops of their heads, they stirred quickly. Lily’s heart filled her entire chest as both twins jolted upright and beamed at the sight of their dad, suddenly and completely alert. They scampered over and climbed up onto Caden’s lap, nearly causing him to drop his drink. Future Lily reached over and took it calmly without even having to really look their way. And present Lily absolutely _melted_ in the most pathetic way as she watched Caden envelop them in his arms. He held them to his heart so securely that Lily—watching through somebody else’s eyes, through a crystal ball, in the _past_ —could somehow feel the safety and ease that the twins were feeling as they rested in their dad’s embrace.

The scene was beginning to blur again. Lily made a sound of protest.

“Not yet,” she complained.

But the scene was growing hazier and hazier. Lily stared hard at the image, trying to take in every little detail before it was too late. Iris’s little swimsuit was clearly mismatched—the top was tangerine and the ruffled bottoms were covered in emerald and silver polka dots. She’d almost certainly dressed herself. Elliot had muggle stick-on tattoos on his arms; Iris had the same kind, but she’d placed hers all over her left leg and her tummy. Caden was wearing a ring. In the sand behind them, she spotted what looked very much like Big Boy’s prints. Elliot had a small bruise on his forehead, no doubt from playing too hard or wrestling with Big Boy. Lily had a few more tattoos, though as the scene continued to blur, she couldn’t make out what they were exactly. The twins’ faces were so adorable, so beautiful, that Lily wanted to keep looking at them for at least a few more minutes, but her time was up. With a somewhat sickening switch, her _real_ vision returned, bringing her back to the reality of her childhood bedroom.

“Bloody fucking _hell_ ,” Lily muttered.

Caden was silent. Lily rubbed her thighs and tried to process what she’d seen. She felt the strangest yearning inside of her heart; it was a feeling she had never known before. It was close to how she’d felt earlier in the day after she’d gotten the baby clothes and had found herself longing to hold the babies themselves, but far more tangible. She felt like she was missing the twins, but she didn’t even know them yet, so how could she miss them? She wasn’t sure what to do with the strange feeling. They hadn’t _gone_ anywhere; she still had them. She set her hands on her stomach and reminded herself that they were just beneath her skin. But seeing them _there_ , with her and Caden, seamless additions to their lives in such a wonderful, lovely way…that was something entirely different.

When Lily finally glanced at Caden to gauge his reaction, she was taken aback to find him moved to the point of tears. Her eyes widened. She parted her lips and stared uncertainly at his damp cheeks.

“Oh,” she said lamely.

He looked to the side and reached up to wipe at his eyes. “Sorry.”

“No—don’t apologize, that’s stupid,” she said. She scooted over towards him. She reached over into his lap and took his hand between hers. She leaned against his arm. “Do you…want to…you know?”

He sounded tearful and confused. “Do I look like I’m presently in the mood for sex?”

“No! I mean…” she was embarrassed. She felt her cheeks glow. “Do you want to…talk about it?”

Unfortunately, that question seemed to make his tearful state worse. Lily watched his eyes grow hazy behind tears.

“It’s just—” he broke off, his words strained. “Sorry,” he said again, struggling to compose himself.  

Lily lifted a fist. “If you apologize again I’m going to hit you,” she lied.

He looked off to the side. After a moment, he looked back down at her. She was surprised at how quickly her own eyes prickled with tears at the sight of his. “It looked like family. I’ve never seen myself that way. That’s all.”

If she had ever felt tears burn so fiercely so quickly, she couldn’t remember it. Her vision was obscured within seconds. She threw her arms around his neck and dragged him down into her embrace. He held her as she kissed his hair and anywhere else her lips could reach, her stupid, sentimental heart working its way up her throat.

“That’s because it was _your_ family,” she said. And then, because things were far too emotional for her liking: “Are you blind or something?”

“No,” he said thickly. “I’ll leave that job to you.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She tucked herself against his side.

“They were healthy and happy,” she said. As she fully processed that, she felt a massive weight lift from her shoulders. “I didn’t screw it up.”

“ _We_ didn’t screw it up.”

She let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. As they sat there together, quietly processing what they’d seen, Lily felt certain that she had finally seen the last of her nightmares.

 


	16. II. Golden*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been forever since I've updated and I apologize! I've had a lot of life changes recently and I've had a difficult time keeping up with writing. This is technically a bonus chapter* so those of you who are still reading can take it or leave it! If you don't particularly care for another chapter of Lily's story, you can skip right over this one and go on to chapter 17. I wasn't going to post it-- I was going to just end part 2 with chapter 15 and jump right to part 3 (when the kids are all kids rather than babies) for chapter 16-- but I was having a difficult time moving forward to part 3 without writing this chapter first. So I figured there might be a few people who are interested in reading this in the meantime. I apologize for any mistakes...I proofread this and edited it once all the way through and then AO3 crashed and I lost all my progress. I have really limited spare time today so I had to redo it really quickly and I'm sure I probably missed a lot. Very frustrating :( Thanks to all of you who commented during my long absence! I hope to get some replying done this week if I ever find any spare time. Thanks for reading!

He was crammed between two claustrophobically narrow bookshelves in a decrepit bookshop with wooden floors that sagged and groaned beneath your every step. The section—children’s literature—had clearly been designed to accommodate small children bodies and wasn’t well-suited for grown men. Despite this, his best mate seemed well at ease: he was sitting on a children’s stepstool—his knees nearly brushing his chin—cheerfully perusing a used copy of magical fairytales.

The last thing Caden wanted was to damper Hugo’s excitement, but a particularly large book with three-dimensional photos of magical beasts was digging quite painfully into his shoulder blade, and the lingering smell of mildew was a bit suspicious.

“Hugo,” he began. He shuffled slightly to escape the sharp poke of _Children’s Book of Magical Beasts_ , but all he managed to do was slam his hipbone into _Hexes for All Ages!_ “This is…nice.”

Hugo beamed. He turned the fairytale anthology around to show Caden some rather vivid watercolor illustrations. “This was my favorite part!”

“Right, I like it. Nice bleeding arm stump.” He shuffled uncomfortably again. He thought about sitting on the ground—Hugo seemed to be faring better—but Hugo’s frame was also a good bit narrower than his was, so he wasn’t sure that’d do him much good. He had planned on gradually, bit-by-bit getting around to his point, but when he shuffled forward again and got nailed between the legs by _A History on Magical Paparazzi: Kids’ Edition_ , he decided to speed things up. His eyes watering with pain, he said: “Mate. Can babies comprehend all of this?”

Hugo looked up. His face fell. “What do you mean?” Hugo was incredibly intelligent; he knew exactly what Caden meant. But in an effort to be gentle, Caden indulged him.

“Well…you know. You said it was ‘extremely important’ that I come here before the babies are born, but if Lily and I read a book to the babies, they won’t really comprehend it. Because they’re babies?” Hugo’s face fell further. “Not that I don’t appreciate you showing me this place…I see why you love it so much. It’s very cool. And it’ll be _great_ to take the babies here once they’re no longer babies. I just don’t think I need to peruse very long _today_ is all.” A beat. “Plus, I’m really cramped in here.” He gestured at the narrow space between the shelves. Hugo looked around as if he’d only just realized the space was unwelcoming.  

“My mum has been taking us here since before we were even born. It’s _never_ too early to read to your kids! In fact, you ought to be reading to them now!”

“But they’re still inside—” he realized Hugo was very aware of this and did not care. He briefly imaged his girlfriend’s reaction if he whipped a picture book out and began reading to her massive stomach. He was certain it’d end in a pillow-smack to his face. “Lily’s not going to let me read to the babies.”

“She might! If we convince her that it’s in their best interests!” Hugo persisted. “I’ve got some great studies I can show her that just might change her entire viewpoint!” Caden arched an eyebrow. “Well, she might agree to let you read to them just so she can mercilessly tease you for it for ages afterwards.”

“That sounds more like it.” Caden shuffled uncomfortably again, calculated the quickest way to leave here without disappointing Hugo, and reached forward for the book of fairy tales in his hands. “Okay. Sold. I like what you’re saying; it’s a good point. I’ll take this one, and this one, and this one, and this one,” as he spoke, he pulled books at random from the shelves. When his arms were holding a stack of books, he turned and wedged himself through the shelves towards the till. Hugo jumped up, slammed his head into the edge of a massive book on famous potioneers, and then scurried after Caden, wincing.

“Oh!” he said excitedly, his eyes on the books Caden was now stacking up in front of the shopkeeper. “I _love_ that one! Oh, and that one! Rose used to read me _that one_ every time we came here!”

Caden had just picked the first ones his eyes landed on. He turned to face his friend. “Have you read literally every book in that section?”

“No, I think there were a few new additions since last week.”

Caden laughed. Underneath his amusement, though, he found himself hoping that he could one day be the sort of parent that left such an impression. Here Hugo was, only a few days separated from his wedding, and he was still coming to the same bookshop his mum took him to when he was a kid. Caden had never shared a memory so lovely with a grown up; even now, thinking hard on it, he couldn’t come up with one instance from his childhood that made him feel any sort of nostalgia or longing. So maybe Hugo was right about the books.

“You know,” he said as they walked from the shop. He was idly flipping through one he’d randomly grabbed about a goat who switches bodies with the fictional Minister for Magic for a day. “I think babies would enjoy these. This one’s got a sort of rhyming thing going on, you know?”

Hugo beamed. “Yeah! I _know_! You should hear the voice Rose always did for the talking goat. I pissed my trousers over it once. On that very same stool I was just sitting on, in fact…”

Caden and Hugo headed back to Aster’s shop, where two of her designers were working on their robe alterations for the wedding that Saturday. Caden was wondering something, but before he could ask, Hugo voiced it.

“I think I really want to have a baby,” he mused.

Caden realized he’d never really heard Aster say one way or another what her opinions on children were. Any time it had come up during their Hogwarts years—which was naturally very sparingly and only after James and Nora had yet _another_ child and made the topic a bit more relevant—Lily had usually dominated the conversation with a parade of _‘no fucking way!’_ s, leaving little room for input from anybody else. Caden looked down at Hugo’s thoughtful, grinning expression and hoped desperately (for his friend’s sake) that Aster wanted the same things, too.

“Do you know if Aster wants babies?” he asked carefully.

“Oh, yeah! Always has. ‘Course, she’s a _bit_ jealous—though don’t tell Lily that—because she’s always wanted twins really badly.”

Caden snorted. “Have Scorpius give you both whatever the hell he gave Lily and you two will be proud parents to sextuplets in no time at all.”

Hugo tsked. “Naughty Scorpius and his uterus meddling.”

“I don’t particularly like that phrase, seeing as though it’s my girlfriend who was meddled with.” They came to a stop outside of Aster’s clothing shop. Caden shifted the children’s books to his other arm and pushed the door open. Sierra—one of Aster’s seamstresses, hard at work on the alterations to their dress robes—waved as they stepped into the warm building. Customers were milling around the clothing racks and hardly paid Hugo and Caden much mind as they weaved through the shop towards the stairs.

“I hope Aster and Lily are back,” Hugo said eagerly. He began taking the winding steps two at a time.

“Nah,” Caden said at once, unable to—in good conscience—agree with his friend.  He thought back to earlier this morning: Lily had a massive meltdown during her dress fitting, got so angry that she did accidental magic (an ink pot soared across the room, narrowly missing Caden’s head), and had nearly fallen down the stairs in her attempt to storm off in a rage. He hoped desperately that she was at home napping. She was genuinely too large to function as she once had but _refused_ to admit it, leading her to push herself way too far, typically to the point of frustrated exhaustion. Rest would do her good. But knowing Lily, she was doing the exact opposite.

“Yeah, she’s a little bit difficult,” Hugo said nicely.

“I can’t blame her at all.” Caden felt a familiar flash of guilt. “It really fucking sucks. What she’s going through.”

Hugo paused at the top of the stairs and frowned down at Caden. “That isn’t very nice. That’s your babies you’re talking about.” He pushed the door open.

“I didn’t say my babies suck. I’m talking about the pregnancy,” he clarified. He dropped his newly purchased items down beside the door. Just as he’d suspected, his girlfriend was still in the studio. But at least she was sitting down; he’d halfway expected her to be jogging in place. Instead, she was buried beneath books and parchment, her glasses resting halfway down her nose and her brow pursed in concentration. Caden felt drawn to her and her slightly tousled hair and intent expression—he was partial to her ‘focused look’—but he knew better than to approach with anything less than caution. She _had_ nearly given him a concussion that morning by accident. No telling what’d happen if she decided to lash out on _purpose_.

“Hugo!” Aster said happily. She bounced over with a bright smile lighting up her face. “How was lunch?”

Hugo and Aster retreated to one of the many sofas littering the massive room. They collapsed down upon it to chat while Caden approached his recently chronically cross—albeit beautiful and clever—girlfriend. He lifted three heavy texts off the end cushion of the sofa; they were so old that the covers were ripped and frayed and the pages were mostly hanging loose. The titles were in Ancient Runes. Caden, who’d hated Ancient Runes, didn’t even feel like trying to remember enough to decipher them. He settled back against the cushions and looked over at Lily. She had her head resting against the sofa and was holding an absurdly long roll of parchment up in the air above her face. It trailed down over her massive stomach—had it somehow managed to get even _larger_ during their brief, hour-long separation?—and stopped near her knees. The entire length of it was full of her cramped, tilting handwriting. He knew from the various diagrams and equations that this was something to do with her lime pox research, but nothing more than that on the parchment made much sense to him.

“Hey,” he greeted. He studied her carefully: her brows were drawn down in concentration, her nose was slightly wrinkled, and her lips were parted, which meant she was now focusing entirely on her work and was less likely to lash out at him. He leaned in and kissed the edge of her lips, his hand falling to rest naturally on her belly as he did. He felt his heart jump as he felt movement shift beneath his palm. He glanced down at her stomach and brought his other hand over to rest on it. Both babies were kicking quite a lot. “The babies seem…restless.”

“No, they’re having a party. Because they made me fat. And they’re like…glad. Or something,” Lily said shortly. She made an aggressive mark on her parchment. The tip of her quill ripped right through it. Okay. So she _wasn’t_ over the dress fitting incident.

“You’re pregnant. Of course you’re fat.”

Another angry mark. Another hole in the parchment. “I’m going to look horrid in my best friend’s wedding photos.”

He scoffed. “ _Horrid_? You don’t look horrid. You look—” but he stopped short just in time because in all honesty, he thought she looked rather adorable, and he knew that would insult her more than anything else. “…Powerful.”

She didn’t miss his near slip-up. She glowered at him from over her glasses, the heat in her gaze spectacular. “Fuck off. Bye.”

“No. You fuck off. You’re being ridiculous. You’re gorgeous and you know it, so what are you _really_ so cross about?” he demanded.

She swelled with rage. If it weren’t for the difficulty she had as she struggled to sit up straight, he might’ve been a bit scared.

“I’m cross because I look like a bloody fucking whale! A _whale_! And what’s worse—I feel like one! And I won’t be able to do much of anything at Aster and Hugo’s wedding, and I look _awful_ in my dress, and I’m really fucking sick of this!”

His guilt stung him severely enough to render him speechless for a brief moment. He worked through it quickly, though, having extensive experience with pushing his own emotions to the side. “I refuse to agree that you look awful, but I am sorry that you feel that way.”

Her face reddened. “It’s not an opinion! It’s a fact!” She went to shove her parchment off her lap, but it was so long that she had a difficult time getting it to slide completely off her stomach. She huffed angrily and slapped it off her. She was presumably intending to rise, but it wasn’t going too well. She gritted her teeth angrily and continued through her teeth as she tried to haul herself off the sofa. “Don’t—you—talk—to—me—like—I’m—a—sodding—client!!”

It was excruciatingly frustrating to watch her struggle to stand. The urge to help her up was strong. But he knew doing so would only upset her more. The closer she got to hysteria, the calmer he had to remind himself to be. He waited patiently as she fought her way upright and then into a standing position. She set a hand on her stomach, regained her balance, and waved her wand wordlessly; all the books opened on the sofa slammed shut.

“I’m going out,” she snapped. He didn’t dare say a word in objection, but her brown eyes looked glassier than usual, and he was worried that she was upset. “I need fresh air. I can’t stand to be inside a moment longer.”

“Sure,” he said calmly. “Want me to come along?”

She set her hands on her hips. “Are you going to stop trying to placate me?”

“Sure. I’ll find something to be upset about, too. We can throw tantrums up and down Diagon Alley.”

He saw the corners of her lips twitch momentarily. She let her hands slide off her hips and hang at her side. “Fine. I guess you can come with me. Just don’t annoy me.”

“Only if you don’t annoy me,” he shot back briskly. He walked over and arched an eyebrow at her. “Mind you, that’s quite difficult to accomplish these days.”

She reached out and punched his shoulder hard. He felt relief puncture his concern ( _that_ was Normal Lily.) He reached out and punched her back just as hard; he watched the tension in her shoulder visibly lessen from that one simple gesture.

“C’mon,” she muttered. “Bye, Aster. Bye, Hugo.”

Aster pulled out of her kiss with Hugo. Her dark eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Oh, are you leaving already?”

“Yeah. We’re going to go set some shit on fire or something,” muttered Lily.

Hugo looked concerned. He met Caden’s eyes and shook his head once. Caden nodded back. _No worries. Nobody’s really setting fire to anything._

“Okay, well, I’m sorry the fitting didn’t go well, Lily,” Aster apologized. “I really thought you’d like it.”

“It wasn’t your dress that was the problem. It’s _this_ ,” Lily said, waving a hand down at her mountainous frame.

Caden knew Aster was going to make the mistake right before she made it, but he had no way to warn her or head her off.

“I really do think the dress looked lovely on you,” Aster told Lily gently, her voice far too mollifying. “You looked precious, you really did.”

Caden cursed internally. He glanced at Lily, expecting her cheeks to pink with anger. But instead, she’d looked off to the side. She ground her teeth for a moment. Then, with a strained voice and great difficulty, she said: “‘Kay.” And with that, she pushed ahead and walked to the stairs.

Caden exchanged a frown with Aster.

“She’s miserable,” Aster said quietly as if he didn’t know. He felt his throat narrow. He sensed a call for action in those words, a slight sense of blame: he knew she wanted him to fix it, but he wasn’t sure how to do that, and that made him feel even more awful.

He nodded once. He automatically glanced over at his best friend. Hugo was appraising him with soft eyes.

“You’re doing all you can,” he said. There was such confidence in his voice that Caden felt inclined to believe him. But _was he_ doing all he could?

He was reminded once again, with another wave of fearful nausea, that he had no fucking idea what he was doing.

* * *

 

They went for a walk around muggle London. Lily blazed ahead of him for most of it, driven either by stubbornness or frustration. He was preoccupied with his own worries and hardly seemed to notice where they were going. Her breakneck speed and lowered stamina caught up with her outside of a yoga studio; she sank down onto a bench, her cheeks flushed and her posture sagging with exhaustion. Caden settled down in the space beside her. He looked over at her—at her shining, magnificent hair flowing over her shoulders, the sun illuminating the reds and golds, at her pretty facial features, currently facing downward as she leaned over and stared at the ground, at her thin, calloused fingers, adorned with her collection of opal rings, set atop her ever-growing belly—and he wondered how she could possibly feel so bad about herself. He wondered what he could do to help. And he wondered why he didn’t already know what to do to help. It wasn’t simple with Lily (nothing ever was.) He couldn’t just tell her that he found her enchanting and fix whatever it was she was going through. Lily had always been a doer; she defined herself (and her sense of self-worth) by her actions and abilities. The pregnancy was proving to be very hard for her. After they’d returned to New Zealand after Lyra was born, she had suddenly found herself so limited in terms of what she could do. It only took one week of being stuck on desk duty to completely warp her view of herself. She was, in all honesty, a basket-case without an outlet. And the worst part was that it was sort of his fault that she was in this state in the first place. He hadn’t meant to get her pregnant—he certainly hadn’t been trying for it—but he _had_. And now she was unhappy. And he _hated_ seeing her that way.

It was there, sitting beside her, listening to the distant sound of meditation music, that he heard himself voice his greatest fear.

“Do you regret this?”

He couldn’t even look at her after the question left him (and he had made a career out of facing difficult conversations.)

She didn’t respond right away. There was no immediate, impulsive answer. He risked a glance over at her. She was visibly struggling to contain her emotions.

“Sometimes,” she answered, her voice a bit gruff, and the word hit him like a punch to the gut. He looked off to the right and let his eyes fall shut for a moment. He processed the sting in his heart, the heavy, leaden worry sinking in his gut. Sometimes. How much more often than not?

“It’s too late to turn back now,” he heard himself say. He was so damn good at keeping his own emotions out of his words—so damn good at hiding how he really felt—but he could clearly hear the fear in his voice that time. Anxiety coursed through his mind: _What if she leaves? What if she has these babies and leaves? She says over and over that she can’t do it alone—but I_ know _I can’t do it alone. What if she leaves?_

He had offended her. She snapped her eyes to him so quickly that she probably pulled something in her neck.

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Do you really think I’d get rid of them now? Fuck, Caden. _Fuck_.” Disgusted and disturbed, she turned away from him. She crossed her arms over her stomach. Tension settled between them (and not the good kind.)

“I didn’t mean that,” he clarified. His stomach roiled at the mere idea. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, well, do me a favor, yeah, and for once—just for _once_ —say what you fucking mean and don’t speak in circles.”

Any other time—speaking of any other topic—he would’ve brushed off her angry words and maintained his composure. But weeks of concern surged up within him. Weeks of odd emotional bursts—bursts he’d kept hidden for her sake—rose once more. And he couldn’t do it anymore. He felt something in his resolve burst. It had been ages since he just _couldn’t._

“Fine,” he said, his voice trembling. “Here is what I fucking mean: we’re nine or ten weeks away from having twins and you seem to be on the edge of having a full-blown breakdown. I’m terrified you’re going to regret the decision that you made and abandon your family. I’m fucking terrified that I ruined your life. I’m terrified because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get you through this. I don’t know anything.” Lily seemed to wilt with every word he said. He could feel his eyes burning. “There. So that’s how I really feel. Did that make you feel better? Did it make you feel better to hear it? Because it didn’t make me feel better to say it.”

She didn’t have to answer him. He could tell that losing his cool had shaken her. He looked away from her and crossed his arms over his chest. It was a long while before either of them said anything, and it was Lily who broke the silence.

“I know that it will be okay because I saw it. I saw us. And our babies. And it must have been real…it _must have_. But I don’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel…like me. I don’t understand how _this—_ how I’m feeling now—turns into what we saw in that pensieve. I don’t regret _them,_ Caden…I love _them_. Already, I really do. And I know you do, too—”

“I do,” he admitted, his voice cracking a bit. He let his eyes fall shut. He envisioned those adorable children from the vision and felt his heart widen.

“But this isn’t natural for me. None of this. I’m meant to be riding dragons and leaping midair from my broom…I’m meant to be being _useful_ , not stuck indoors struggling to even tie my own shoes without magic. I really don’t like being pregnant. And I guess I’m just surprised by how much it sucks. And it does…it really, really sucks for me.”

“I know,” he agreed. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly have two infants inside of _his_ body. The strangeness of carrying them day in and day out, the inconvenience and discomfort of trying to continue on with life despite their disruptive presence. The specific discomforts: little feet getting wedged behind ribs, heads pressing against bladders, kicking nonstop throughout the night.

“I just want this to be over,” she admitted, her voice a bit thick. “I just want them to be here. I want my body to be _mine_ again. I want to get back to the things that I love…the things that are _mine_. You know?”

“Yeah,” he said. He thought back to the way their life together had been. That had always felt like his.

He felt her gaze settle on the side of his face. He turned. He met her eyes; it was so easy to fall into them, so easy to lean forward as if their faces were drawn to each other’s. In a way, it felt that way (and always had.)

“I don’t want to have any more after this,” she told him seriously. “It fucking sucks and I don’t want to go through it again. Once they’re here, I want to make it so that I can’t ever get pregnant again.”

It wasn’t a hard decision. “Sounds fair,” he agreed at once. He nodded. “Me too, then.”

She didn’t appear shocked by his quick agreement. “We’ll have them and they’re enough. Two is good.”

“Two is great. Two is more than I ever dreamed of.”

She laughed. “Merlin, me too.” She bowed forward as far as she could go and rubbed her face. “What is _happening_? I’m going to be a mum in a few months. A _mum_. _Me_. Lily Potter. Lily Luna Potter. I’m going to be a _mother_.”

“I’m going to be a _dad_.”

“This is so fucked up. We still let our laundry pile up ‘til we’re out of underwear,” she muttered.

“And then we just go without instead of immediately doing the washing,” he added.

She groaned into her hands. “We’re doomed.”

“We’ll get a maid.”

She glanced over at him and arched an eyebrow. He remembered at once the state they’d left their house in.

“Three maids,” he amended.  

She arched her eyebrow higher.

“ _Four_.”

She hid her face back into her hands. “And a chef,” she muttered. “We eat like rabbits.”

“We’ll just raise them on the same foods we like and then they’ll like those foods, too,” Caden reasoned.

“We have to,” she said. The seriousness in her voice made him think she was talking about more than just their children’s eating habits. “We have to raise them up how we live.”

He didn’t quite get what she meant. “Of course. They’re _ours_.”

He reached over by instinct and set a palm on her stomach. Hers settled naturally on top of his; he turned his palm around and wove his fingers between hers. He felt a light nudge against the back of his hand. He felt his heart jump up his throat as it always did anytime he felt the babies moving about.

“I mean it. We have to be _us_. You can’t go crazy and turn into a psychotic dad like Scorpius and Albus did. You can’t hover over me like James does to Nora. I _cannot_ spend any more time cooped up indoors than I already have. As soon as I’m discharged from hospital and I feel up to it, I’m back at it. Okay?”

He wanted nothing more than for them to be _them_ again. His heart swelled with longing at the idea of it. He would have given _anything_ to have Lily back to her usual wild, spirited self, to be able to traipse around New Zealand with her on weekends. Nothing felt more like home than that.

“As soon as you’re feeling up to it, _we’re_ back at it,” he declared. He reached over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He felt his heart lighten as she leaned into his side. He curled his arm around her warm body and leaned over to kiss the side of her face. The smell of her shampoo and the softness of her hair as it brushed his cheek made his heart throb with longing. “We’ll take a family holiday as soon as you’re ready and as soon as it’s safe for the babies. We’ll go wherever we want. Just us four.”

She looked up at him. For the first time in a few days, her eyes seemed to sparkle.

“Just us four,” she repeated. She crinkled her nose. “It sounds silly.” A pause. “I quite like it.”

The beam that overtook his face was immediate. “I do as well.”

She ducked her face. He watched as she scuffed the soles of her shoes against the pavement. “I’m sorry I threw an ink pot at your face.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You were aiming for my _face_? This pregnancy is really messing with your aim.”

She socked him in the gut without even looking his way. He bit back his grin.

“It’s all right,” he forgave. “I sort of understand.”

With her face still bowed, she said: “I’m really freaked out.”

“I know. Me too.”

“I don’t really know what to think, or do, or feel…I feel so…I dunno.” She rubbed her face uneasily. He waited a beat longer than was comfortable. “I don’t feel like I fit in my own skin anymore. Yes. I think that’s it.”

He knew he couldn’t understand how she felt to any real degree, but he had had flashes of those emotions while purchasing baby items or reading infant-care books. He had never thought of himself as a _dad_ , so it felt so foreign whenever he tried to.

“We’ll need some adjustment time. I think that’s probably okay.”

“I _am_ trying,” she said as if she worried he thought that she _wasn’t_. He wasn’t sure how she could even worry that he thought that. She always tried; that’s one of the things very few people in her life gave her proper credit for. You could say a lot of things about Lily Potter, but you couldn’t say she didn’t give everything her all. She constantly burned with passion and drive. He had always found it a bit enchanting.

“I know you are,” he reassured her. When she failed to straighten up, he realized she was upset. He reached over and pulled her into his arms. He felt better when she didn’t pull away. All he’d wanted to do these past few weeks was comfort her, and _finally,_ she seemed to be at a place where she could accept it.

“I’m being awful to you. I know I need to stop, but I get so _annoyed_. I don’t even know why. You’re not really doing anything…not _really_ …and I _know_ that…but I guess…I guess I just take it out on you.”

“Why stop being awful to me when you’re so good at it?”

She didn’t laugh, but she wasn’t crying either, so he took that as a victory. He switched tactics. He smoothed his hand down her long(er) hair and kissed her shoulder.

“You’re having our twins. You’re allowed to take it out on me,” he said instead.

“It’s really not right.”

“I appreciate you noticing that and acknowledging it. But I need you to _also_ notice and acknowledge that I know you. I know you so fucking well, Lily. And I can take the moodiness and the ink pots thrown my way. But I can’t take thinking you’re miserable and thinking that it’s my fault. So if you can promise not to be miserable, I promise I can take anything.”

She snorted. “That’s a big promise. What if our kids are, like, really, _really_ awful?”

It was immediate: “They won’t be awful. They’re ours.”

“Well,” she mumbled into his shirt. “One thing’s certain…if they get my guts and your ability to somehow talk your way out of—and into— _anything_ , they’ll be unstoppable.”

“Oh, Merlin bless their professors…”

Lily snickered. “My dad won’t know what hit him.”

* * *

 

“You’re in a better mood,” Aster said, her eyes on Lily as they took their customary seats at the pub. She looked quickly at Caden and nodded his way approvingly. He didn’t really feel like he’d done much, but it wasn’t really Aster’s business anyway, so he didn’t clarify. “I wasn’t sure if you’d join us.”

“Yeah, well,” Lily muttered gruffly, “I’d never turn down a chance to see Zabini get off his face and make a fool of himself in public. Maybe he’ll flash Emi again. That was hilarious.”

Zabini puffed up. “OI! Maybe _you’ll_ fall over again because of your massive stomach— _that_ was hilarious!”

Lily’s hand inched towards her wand pocket. Caden stepped between them quickly right as her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“C’mon, stop,” he implored. “Zabini, she’s pregnant, mate, lay off. Lily, lay off…it’s _Zabini_.”

“OI!” the two chorused.

He shrugged. “What? It’s the truth.”

And because nobody could really refute that—though both parties visibly struggled to—the argument pandered off without any bats flying out from anybody’s (Zabini’s) nostrils. Caden was counting that one as a win.

He sat beside Lily and they managed to have a somewhat decent time despite their sobriety in comparison to their friends. After only two hours in, Caden had to help Saul to the toilets to keep him from accidentally starting a pub brawl on his way through the crowds. He was incredibly antagonistic while drunk.

“Get out my fucking—”

“He means _excuse us_ ,” Caden interjected firmly. He elbowed in front of Saul and shot the young girls an apologetic smile. “It’s not his native language, don’t mind him.”

“Not my fucking—?!”

“Shut the fuck up, Saul.”

Caden hauled him to the toilets by his elbow and deposited him in front of a urinal. He then traveled over to the mirror in front of the sinks and studied his own reflection while he waited. _Bad_ , he assessed at once. His stomach clenched. He quickly lifted his hands up and pulled his fingers through his hair; it’d gotten extremely disheveled at some point. He was still tidying his appearance when Saul ambled up to the sinks, bleary eyed and muttering underneath his breath.

“I don’t—” he broke off with a sudden hiccup “—need a babysitter.”

“Yes you do,” Caden countered patiently. He wet his hand beneath the faucet and tried to smooth the last few wayward hairs that way. Saul washed his hands and then leaned tiredly against the sink, his eyes on Caden.

“Why’d’you do that?” he slurred.

Caden looked at Saul’s reflection in the mirror. He knew what he was asking.

“Do what?” he asked lightly.

“Y’know. The hair tidying. You always, y’know, get ready to go everywhere. And you’re clean.”

Caden turned to face Saul. “Are you asking me why I bathe?”

“No. Don’t be a fucking…goblin…muncher. You know what I’m—what I’m saying.”

Yes, he _did_ know what he was saying. But as he turned back to face the mirror and smoothed his hair back one more time, he also knew that he wouldn’t be answering him.

“C’mon,” Caden said. “I need to make sure my girlfriend didn’t get into a fight.”

“She always fights. Let her. She’ll win,” he muttered.

“That was never in question.”

Thankfully, when he returned to the table, Lily had kept her temper in check. Being sober around drunken people usually annoyed her, but she was gigging with Aster and Claire as they walked up. Caden sat back beside her. He felt her small, warm hand slip between his thighs from beneath the table. He smirked at the wall across from them and felt his entire chest fill with warmth at her touch. He had almost forgotten the uneasiness Saul’s question brought until his voice fought through the din of the pub.

“Caden won’t tell me what’s up with the…the _thing_. You know the thing. The nice hair and clean thing.”

Zabini jumped on the topic. “Yeah!”

Caden felt trepidation crawl up his spine. He glanced around the table; most everybody was looking at him intently like they’d only just noticed that he was well-groomed. He felt himself begin to panic. He didn’t like all their eyes on him and he didn’t like the topic. He was calculating what to say to get out of this situation when his girlfriend interjected, headstrong and never hesitating.

“I understand how confusing that must be for you two. Let me help you. See, if you wake up and bathe, and comb your hair, and smell nice, girls will actually want to fuck you. It works like this: instead of smelling like an ogre’s arsecrack, you—”

Zabini and Saul abandoned their previous line of questioning for the sake of slinging insults back at Lily. She shouldered them without the slightest ruffle, leaving Caden free from the stress of dealing with their questions. And he loved her more for it. She probably had no idea how much he wanted the subject changed—and she certainly didn’t know _why_ —but she was there for him instinctively despite that. So much of Lily’s greatness came from her gut. It was something else nobody really seemed to appreciate except him and—sometimes—her parents.

He reached down and took her hand, still resting between his thighs. He held it tightly. He felt her glance at him quickly, but she didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she leaned in at an opportune moment and whispered something he wouldn’t dare repeat in polite company in his ear.

And he loved her. Genuinely, completely, without hesitation or expectation. He felt overcome by it for an unbearable moment. All he wanted was to make love to her and _show her_ how much. But fucking had turned into a rather complicated event thanks to her ever growing stomach, and it was surely something they couldn’t pull off in a pub toilet for the time being.

* * *

 

He was pulled from an anxiety dream about late paperwork by the light sensation of Lily’s fingers tapping against his chest. He groaned and shooed her hands away.

“No,” he slurred. “No more waking me about ice cream dreams.”

“It’s not that,” she whispered, and at first, he thought perhaps something was wrong. He wrenched his eyes opened and looked around in vaguely alarmed confusion. Had something happened to her? The babies? Her family? What? But she didn’t seem physically injured or remarkably upset. She peered at him. “It wasn’t the ice cream dream. This time, I was trying to tie a llama to a post, and—”

Caden groaned again. He rolled over onto his stomach and shoved his head beneath his pillow.

“No!” he complained into the sheets, cutting off her retelling of her weird dream. “Lily, c’mon. I’m tired. Hugo has me working from sun-up ‘til sundown tomorrow to get things in order for the wedding. No llama dreams.”

The bed bounced slightly; Caden guessed she’d kicked her legs. “Fine! Be that way! I’ll just lie here, then, and you go the fuck back to sleep. Goodnight.”

He _almost_ let himself slip back off to sleep. Physically, he wanted to desperately. But his mind clung stubbornly to her words. He sighed and rolled back over. He set his pillow to the side and stared over at his girlfriend. She’d turned over so her back was to him.

“Why do you have to lie there? Why not just go back to sleep?” he demanded.

She’d clearly been hoping he’d ask. It exploded from her at once. “Because I _can’t_! Because the babies are going _mad_! They’re kicking so much I can see it from the outside of my sodding stomach!”

He rolled over to face her. His heavy eyelids had already drifted back shut to their own accord by the time his wandering hand found her stomach. He pressed his hand against her top: the babies’ kicks and jabs were easily felt.

“Wow,” he yawned. “Must’ve been the dessert. Maybe they’ve got a sugar high.”

“This isn’t a joke!”

“I didn’t say it was! Maybe they really do!”

“I’m really tired but they keep kicking my fucking organs. Make them stop,” she demanded.

He wasn’t really sure what she expected him to do. He halfheartedly patted her stomach. “Shhh…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! You’re a _horrid_ disciplinarian!” Lily complained.

Caden yawned again. “Lily, they’re unborn babies. They don’t need discipline and they don’t understand words. Why don’t you go walk around? Maybe it’ll lull them to sleep.”

“Tried it! And I tried singing! And I even tried to read one of those stupid fucking books Hugo made you buy!”

Caden’s lips twitched up despite his annoyance and exhaustion. “Really? Did you? Which one?”

“I dunno! Something to do with goblins!” She inhaled sharply. Caden felt her rings scratch against the back of his hand as she quickly moved her hand over his to knead at a spot right above it. “ _Ow_! Elliot, you little _fucker_! Do it again and I swear I won’t eat any of my cravings ever again! And I _know_ you’re the one who keeps making me eat spinach!”

 _She’s officially lost it_.

Teasingly, he said (with a fake air of seriousness): “Well, you tried the wrong book. Read the rhyming one. Maybe the rhythm will calm them down.”

He’d expected her to backhand his head. He _didn’t_ expect her to immediately scoot over to the edge of the bed. He opened his eyes and watched as she lit a lamp with her wand and grabbed one of those children’s books off the bedside table. She propped herself up against the headboard with a bit of struggle. She looked down at her stomach before beginning.

“Listen and be still!” she ordered. But Caden doubted it did anything…because they were fetuses. Lily opened the book so angrily that the cover page tore. She began without even pausing to take a breath. “On a still and frosty night, a child climbed from bed without light. All around his home were snores, except for his floors, which creaked and yelled with every step, while still his family slept. On a still and frosty night, a child wandered through the halls without sight…”

_All around his home, he traveled without fright._

With such a sudden and overwhelming burst of sorrow that it brought instantaneous tears to his eyes, Caden recalled—with disturbing clarity—every single word as Lily said it. He could not have told anybody the name of the book. He could not have told anybody what made him choose it at the bookshop. But he knew right then, without a shadow of a doubt, that he had once been read this book by his own mother. He could feel the softness of her arms around him. He could smell a citrusy scent that must have been his childhood home. He could remember the way she’d read in whispers, though he had no idea now _why_ she had been whispering. His very few memories of his dad involved yelling, so maybe his mother had been whispering for that reason. Maybe they were hiding. Maybe—and now he could remember her hands shivering as she turned a page, and he could remember a picture in the book of a single flame as the boy went down a pitch dark hallway—maybe his dad and mum had been fighting. He didn’t know. And the lack of knowing sometimes hurt worse than anything else. He had never understood how his parents could’ve done what they did, and he had certainly never, ever forgiven them for it, but he felt instinctively that they _must_ have loved him, at least a little bit. Now that he was on the path to becoming a parent, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could become a father and not love their child. They _must have_.

Lily stopped reading suddenly. “God, this book is a fucking downer, and I think they’re kicking _harder_ now. Why the fuck did you pick this? It’s depressing.”

“I don’t know,” he said at once. It was true. Had he subconsciously chosen it because he remembered it? Or was it really random?

Lily paused. “Er…are you _crying_?” she asked incredulously.

He was. He hadn’t realized it until right then. He quickly turned his face towards the other side.

“Nuh-uh!” she complained. She reached over and grasped his chin. She turned his face back; her eyes were intense and probing as he stared back at her. “You are! What?!”

“Nothing!” he said at once. He felt flustered and confused. He reached up and wiped at his cheeks.

“No, it’s not ‘nothing!’ And what the hell was that stuff at the pub about? They were teasing you about your appearance and you looked like they’d just caught you shoplifting or something.”

He pursed his lips and said nothing.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I have your babies inside of me and you think it’s okay to keep secrets from me? Why is it when _I_ keep emotional secrets _I’m_ being emotionally unavailable and making you do all the “emotional labor”, but _you’re_ allowed to be shady and secretive?”

“It’s nothing, really,” he insisted. “I just…I dunno. I know this book, I think. I think maybe my mum read it to me once.”

She didn’t seem to believe him. “You’re crying because you remember the book?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I just felt so sad suddenly…maybe it was a sad memory. Maybe something bad was happening when she was reading it to me. I don’t know. I told you I don’t remember much about them.” An awkward silence settled over them. He pushed through it. “Or maybe I’m crying because I’m exhausted because my girlfriend keeps waking me up to tell me about her dreams.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Maybe if you hadn’t impregnated me with twins I wouldn’t have to have weird pregnancy dreams.”

“Fair enough,” he allowed. He felt her inch closer. And closer. And closer. When she leaned into his chest— _cuddled up,_ really, though she never would’ve allowed that phrasing to be used out loud—he felt the tension in his chest unravel. He held her close. He could feel the babies kicking against _his_ stomach as hers pressed against his.

“They really are restless.”

“Maybe they’re excited about the wedding,” she mumbled offhandedly.

“Maybe,” he agreed, even though he knew they weren’t capable of experiencing any such emotion yet. He hid his face in her hair and felt comforted by the scent of her shampoo. “We’re not getting any more sleep, are we?”

“Nah. Sorry. Sort of.”

“No you’re not.”

“Not really. Like I said…you’re half the reason they’re here, so you can stay up and suffer with me.”

“Again: fair enough,” he agreed.

She yawned into his skin. “I think I know what middle name I want to give Elliot.”

He hadn’t even realized she’d been actively thinking about it. He’d honestly expected her to impulsively scrawl something on the birth certificate six hours after the babies were born. “Yeah? Okay, let’s hear it.”

“Well, I was thinking we ought to stick with an A name. Since Iris has Adelaide and your middle name starts with an A. It’s, y’know. Cute.”

“ _Cute_ ,” he repeated. She kicked him.

“Yours doesn’t start with an A,” he reminded her.

She shrugged. “I’m a unique creature, Caden.”

“A true statement if I ever heard one…” he muttered. She kicked him again. He kicked back.

“ _So_ ,” she continued firmly. “I like Arum.”

He didn’t respond for a long beat. “…Okay,” he finally said. “Er…why?”

“It’s a type of lily. An arum lily. A flower. I like flower names. We’ve talked about this.”

“Right,” he recalled. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but he didn’t _hate_ it, and it was only fair that she got to choose it. “Elliot Arum. Sure. But you do realize that will make his initials spell ‘ear’?”

She snickered. “Oh yeah. It’s funny.”

He snorted. He stroked his fingers reverently through her bright, soft hair, thinking a strange tangle of sleepy thoughts. He remembered the first time she’d ever _really_ let him touch her hair, and now here they were, lying together in bed, weeks separated from being _parents_ together, his fingers buried in her hair. The hair their children might inherit. What would they get from him? There were a few things he wanted them to have, but many more that he didn’t.

“So…are you going to tell me?”

He refocused on her tired words. “Tell you what?”

“What all that was about at the pub.”

 _Oh_. His cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I just didn’t like them looking at me.”

“Dragon shite. You look good, you know it, and you like people noticing it,” she countered stubbornly.

He almost missed the time when she was emotionally dense. The Lily of their earlier years probably wouldn’t have even noticed that he was avoiding the topic.

“It’s just a habit. Looking nice. My grandparents…the only thing they liked about me was that I looked like ‘a Rowle’. And the only time they ever paid me any mind in any positive way was when I looked nice. So I guess I got in the habit for that reason.”

He worked hard to keep his voice light, but he was sure she heard the way his words tightened a bit at the end. He hadn’t been through much at all in comparison to people like Iset, but he had his own series of horrible childhood memories that he preferred to ignore. Acknowledging that the way he was treated had had any say at all in the man he was today upset him, because if his grandparents’ actions could influence him enough to shape his lifelong grooming habits, what else had his grandparents’ actions influenced? He didn’t want them to have any say on who he was as a person. They didn’t deserve that, not when he’d had to do so many things for himself. Not when he often felt he’d raised himself.

“They should’ve loved you for more than that…you’re more than just a pretty face,” Lily teased.

“Love was never part of it in any capacity. I was like a shiny heirloom.”

“Right.” She trailed off. Then, with significant annoyance in her tone: “When will they die already? I’ve already got the perfect dress for the funeral. I mean, they’re _ancient_. Clock’s ticking. Let’s get on with it.”

He laughed. And it was amazing that he was laughing. Lily had always had the power to make anything and everything lighter and brighter. He leaned down and pressed his cheek against hers; his arm tightened around her waist.

“Is it sexy? Your dress?”

“The sexiest. Let’s fuck during the wake to spite them.”

“You’re brilliant,” he appreciated.

“Yeah, I know.” She patted his back. “I still love you even when you stink.”

“…Thanks, Lil.”

* * *

 

They _almost_ got through Hugo’s stag night without incident. Almost.

A little too much alcohol followed by an overheard conversation between two equally drunk men led to something Caden had never really experienced before: Hugo losing his temper. One moment they’d all been snorting into their respective drinks—a bit drunker than intended perhaps but perfectly fine despite—and the next they heard a nearby pair of men saying quite disrespectful and nasty things about the Minister for Magic. Caden had frowned and glanced quickly at his best friend to see if he’d heard it, but by the time he’d processed how splotchy and dark Hugo’s cheeks had turned, Hugo was out of his seat with his fist flying towards one of the man’s faces. It had broken into a brawl very quickly after that.

“Hold the door, hold it!” Avery groaned, stumbling beneath the weight of Zabini in his arms. Saul wasn’t doing much better, so Caden hurried forward (ignoring the swollen pain of his bruised face and injured shoulder) and shoved the door to Albus and Scorpius’s flat building open. Half of them were too injured to apparate properly, so they’d taken a muggle cab to the first Healer they thought of. Nobody had particularly _urgent_ injuries because their group had “won” the brawl, if anyone could really be considered a winner, but Hugo was in a bad way. His face was swollen, his right eye blackened, and a tooth knocked out. Some sort of engorgement jinx had left his left arm twice the size of his right. He couldn’t show up to his wedding in that state. Caden was desperately hoping that Scorpius was home and could help. He and Albus had declined their invite to Hugo’s stag night, but Caden wasn’t sure if that was because they had to work late or just because they didn’t want to leave Lyra.

They crowded into the lift. Caden helped Saul hold Hugo up as they waited for the lift to arrive at the proper floor.

“I’ll go ahead,” he said, shrugging out from underneath his best friend’s dead weight. “I’ll see if they’re even here before we drag them all the way down the corridor.”

He hurried down the corridor. He stopped outside the emerald door to the Potter-Malfoy flat. He wasn’t even sure what time it was; he just knew that he had to help his friend.

“Albus,” he called, his fist knocking lightly on the door a few times. “Are you there?”

He heard swift approaching footsteps. The door opened remarkably quickly.

“Shhh!” Albus greeted. He cracked the door and peered out of it, looking slightly crazed. “Sh! We _just_ got Lyra to sleep!”

“Sorry, but—”

“She’s been ill and we really can’t leave her. Tell Hugo I’ll see him tomorrow.” Albus paused. He arched an eyebrow. “What happened to your _face_? Did my sister do that?”  

“No,” Caden said impatiently. “Listen, Hugo’s here. There was an…incident and he’s hurt.”

 _That_ got Albus’s full attention. He straightened up and opened the door fully; Caden could see the top of Scorpius’s head leaning against a living room armchair. Lyra was probably sleeping in his arms.

“Hurt? What do you mean? What happened?”

Caden didn’t have time for long stories. “Somebody at the pub insulted his mum.”

“Ah,” Albus said. He nodded. No other questions were asked. “I’ll get Scorpius. Bring Hugo in.”

Caden returned to the end of the hall and helped his injured friends drag Hugo into Albus and Scorpius’s flat. They flung him down on the sofa while Scorpius hovered nervously, his eyes scanning Hugo and assessing his injuries, Baby Lyra still snoozing in his arms.

“Albus, go get a Bruise Potion, some Pain Potion, and a compress,” Scorpius said. Albus turned at once and hurried through their flat. Caden was pulling nervously at his torn shirt, his eyes on his best friend, wondering if this was somehow _his_ fault—he had picked the pub, after all, and maybe he should’ve cut his friends off after so many drinks—when Scorpius tapped his arm.

“Here, could you take her?” Scorpius asked. He carefully held out his baby daughter. Caden felt himself reach out instinctively, and a moment later, Lyra was cradled in his arms. Scorpius turned back to Hugo without a second’s pause, leaving Caden to tend to the infant. He was guessing Scorpius had failed to notice that he too was drunk.

Not trusting himself to walk around holding a baby while intoxicated, Caden stumbled over to the nearest armchair and fell down into it. He shifted Lyra so that she was lying against his chest. He kept a hand on her back to keep her from rolling off. She was so deeply asleep that she hadn’t seemed to sense the transition. The sight of her downy soft strawberry hair made his heart swell with fondness. Lily seemed to have no problem forgetting that this child was genetically half hers, but Caden couldn’t forget it: to him, it was glaring. At first, he’d thought Lyra’s existence would be painful and difficult because it’d remind him of the one thing he’d never get to share with Lily. But that was before the twins. Now, spending time with Lyra just made him feel impatient for August. If he felt this much automatic affection for his niece, what would it feel like when he finally met _his_ children?

He let his eyes fall shut and listened as Scorpius tended to his cousin and friends. The boys were giving a spirited retelling of the pub brawl and making it sound quite a bit more impressive than it actually was, but Caden was too tired to counter them. He was so content that he forgot he too was injured. He dozed lightly until he felt the warmth of a healing charm against his cheekbone. When he opened his eyes, Scorpius was waving his wand over his injured shoulder.

“There we go,” Scorpius declared. “All better.”

“How’s Hugo?” Caden asked at once. His eyes roamed the living room. Hugo was now stretched out on the sofa. Where had everybody else gone?

“His normal self again.”

“Thank Merlin. Aster would have my arse if he showed up like _that_ to the wedding,” Caden mumbled. He yawned. He felt so warm and cozy. “Is Hugo staying the night?”

“Looks like it. He won’t budge. He passed out,” Scorpius whispered. He had amusement lurking in his voice. “Do you want to stay, too?”

Caden sort of did only because he was so comfortable, but he knew Lyra needed to go back to her cot, and he needed to go back to the guest room at Hugo and Aster’s. He hoped Lily would be there. She’d said she might sleep over with the girls at Jillian’s, but maybe their night had gone differently than planned, too.

“Nah, I’m going to go back,” he decided. As soon as he said it, he knew it was the right choice. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt as if he really needed to be back there. “Thanks for your help.” He patted Lyra’s back gently. “Thanks for the nap, Lyra.”

He took the Floo back to Aster and Hugo’s flat (not trusting his apparition skills while still a bit intoxicated), filled a water jug to take back to the bedroom, and then went to the room he and Lily were staying in. He guessed part of him had expected her to be there because when he opened the door and found her sprawled on the bed with what looked like dozens of scrolls of parchment and books, he wasn’t even the least bit surprised.

“Hey,” he greeted. He set the water down on the chest of drawers. Lily waved his way but didn’t look up from her research. So she’d had a _bad_ night. “Bad night?”

She lowered her face into the pages of her book. “The fucking _worst_ ,” she complained. “I couldn’t drink. I couldn’t dance. I’m the ugly friend now, did you know that?! Not _one_ creepy man hit on me! Not _one_!”

Caden pushed a few rolls of parchment to the side so he could sit.

“Shouldn’t that be a _good_ thing? You usually complain about the creepy men who hit on you.”

“Yeah, but…! It’s just…!” she broke off with an angry huff. “It’s just not normal.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t think anything will ever really be ‘normal’ again.”

“And there’s no way this’ll still be a secret after tomorrow. I don’t care how ‘tight’ the wedding security is. _Somebody_ will run their mouth. _Somebody_ will tell Rita Skeeter that I’m pregnant. And then…” she trailed off. She clenched her fist a second later. “I might have to murder somebody.”

“Nah, no murder,” he countered patiently. He scooted a few more books out of the way so he could stretch out beside her. He leaned in and kissed her lips. “We’ll use the Imperius on Rita and convince her to morph permanently into a beetle to live her days out in Hagrid’s garden.”

Lily looked up at him. “Wow,” she appreciated. “That was a quick answer. You’ve thought about this.”

He shrugged. His eyelids drifted shut as her hand brushed against his cheek.

“Your cheek looks a bit red.”

He was surprised that she’d noticed. The healing charm left a bit of inflammation behind that would surely disappear by morning. “Yeah. We drank too much at the pub and then these rough-looking wizards called Hermione a…word I’m not comfortable repeating about our Minister.”

“And Hugo overheard and turned into Rage Hugo?”

Caden opened his eyes and looked over at her, a bit surprised. “Yeah. How’d you guess? It was surprising.”

She shook her head. Her long hair slipped over her shoulders and hung down, nearly touching the pages of her book. “You didn’t know him when he was little. He once bit me because I said his mum was mean.”

Caden choked on a laugh. “Sorry—repeat?!”

“Yeah. We were like three or something. His mum had just put me on the naughty step for, like, I dunno…starting a fire in the garden or something. And I was complaining that she was mean. And Hugo just turned around and bit me. Hard enough to leave little teeth marks!”

Caden laughed. “Oh, Merlin. Why have you never told me this before?!”

Lily turned a page idly. “Because Rage Hugo is nothing compared to Rage James when _our mum_ is insulted. I actually think James is where Hugo learnt his behavior from…”

“Now _that_ I was aware of. I remember seeing him punching the suits of armor at Hogwarts until his knuckles bled because Rita said something about Ginny,” Caden recalled.

“Yeah. One of his many rage attacks,” Lily nodded. She scrawled something on an obscenely long length of parchment. “Weasleys.”

“It’s never boring with you lot,” Caden agreed.

“You’ll get to see Rage Lily if Rita can’t keep her fucking mouth shut,” she added darkly. “I won’t have it. I know eventually everyone will find out. _Witch Weekly_ is already running speculative articles about my ‘absence’. And when they do…I don’t much care what they say about _me_. But I don’t want them saying _anything_ about you or the twins.”

“Well, they’re going to,” he told her, as gently as he could. “You know they are. It won’t be _near_ as bad as it was for your parents—because we’ve got the lying in the press under control—but anytime we’re home, people will be watching and people will be talking. That’s just the way it is.”

“And this is _precisely_ why I would _never_ consider moving back here,” Lily muttered. “My mum was harassing me about it again today. But what sort of mum would I be to move us back here—where our kids will be gawked at and gossiped about—from a place where they have space to run free, a place where no one would _dare_ trespass because it’s full of dozens of dragons, a place where we can just…be us.”

They’d never really talked about this before. It had just been an automatic decision that they would stay in New Zealand during the twins’ childhoods. He couldn’t believe that Ginny even thought she could talk Lily from it.

“I don’t want to move back here, either,” he shared. He had wonderful memories here, but he also had plenty of horrible ones, too. He had an overwhelming majority of wonderful memories in New Zealand. _That_ was where he pictured raising his babies. _That_ was the world he wanted them to grow up in. “It was never in question for me.”

“Nor me.”

He could tell she still felt a bit down. He leaned over and kissed the edge of her jaw, and then her neck, and then the corner of her lips, and by then, she was smiling a bit.

“You won’t be pregnant forever,” he reminded her again.

“I know. It just _feels_ like forever,” she admitted, her voice small.

“But it’s not. They’ll be here before we know it. And if you need to run off to wrestle dragons the hour after they’re born—if that’s what you need to do to burn off all this frustration, to feel like Lily again— you go and do it. I mean it. I’m here for you…whatever you need to do to start feeling like yourself again. I’ll pick up whatever slack there is for as long as I need to. As long as you come back home.”

His love seeped into his words. It made Lily a bit teary. He gave her time and waited patiently as she sorted through her emotions and her words.

“I think the scariest part is that I have no idea what to expect,” she admitted. “I don’t know how I’ll feel after they’re here. I don’t know if I’ll want to run off or if I’ll suddenly decide being cooped up is where I want to be. And it’s a bit scary. I feel like…I’m being changed somehow. And I don’t like change much.”

He was certain that he understood what ancient worry had worked itself up in her mind.

“I know. But you’re still Lily. No matter what, you’re _Lily_. And the twins are _the twins_. They’re Elliot and Iris. They’re _separate._ Remember what we talked about…just because we’re parents doesn’t mean we can’t be ourselves, too. We aren’t sacrificing our identities.”

“I felt very much like a separate identity tonight. I didn’t feel like Lily. I felt like a walking, talking pregnancy belly. I was treated like that.”

“Well, it’s a big belly, in all fairness,” he pointed out. She kicked him swiftly. He ignored it. “People naturally see it first. But it’s not there to stay. August. And then you never have to worry about it ever again. August—then we’re done.”

“August,” she agreed. She inhaled deeply. “I can hang in ‘til August.”

“I know you can,” he agreed. He leaned in and he kissed her. Her strength and resilience had never been in question. This was the same girl he’d watched being tortured for what felt like _hours_ , the same girl who had bitten through her own lip rather than cry. This was the same girl who’d been nearly burnt to death yet still managed to chase down poachers. There wasn’t much she couldn’t handle—as long as she _wanted_ to handle it.

* * *

 

He had felt rather calm and a bit indifferent about the wedding up until the second Hugo and Aster were exchanging vows. And then he found himself digging his nails into his palms to keep from tearing up.

He hadn’t been to many weddings, but he thought Hugo and Aster’s was probably very gorgeous. Nearly everybody seemed to be teary by the time they walked down the aisle as husband and wife. Caden—being the best man—got to walk his own girlfriend—the maid of honor—down the aisle after the bride and groom had left, and he didn’t think he was imagining the mistiness in her eyes, either.

Of course, it turned out he was projecting a bit. Once they stepped into the beautiful tent on the Burrow property where the reception was to be held, Lily leaned in and whispered: “If I don’t get to a toilet _right now_ , we’re going to have a big problem.”

He had to be a bit less polite than he would’ve liked as he pushed through the crowds, creating a path towards the toilets. He waited outside while Lily had her wee, waving at familiar faces and trying his best to look busy so nobody would come over and engage him in conversation yet. Lily gave him a deadly look when she stepped back out.

“Don’t you even _think_ of laughing at me.”

He held up his hands innocently. “I wasn’t! It was a long ceremony. _And_ you’ve got two babies on your bladder. Not laughing.”

She nodded. “Good. That was _miserable_. I can’t even feel my feet anymore and I feel like somebody smashed my spine with a fucking boulder…here, let’s sit here…”

The music started up—one of the Pumpkin Pasties’ newest songs—but Lily didn’t even seem to hear it. She collapsed down in the closest chair and set her hands on her stomach. She did look a bit winded. He sat beside her.

“Want your shoes off?” he offered. The heels surely weren’t helping.

“Fuck yes. Then can you go shove them up Claire’s arse? I _told her_ I didn’t want to wear them,” Lily grumbled.

Caden kneeled on the floor and began undoing the delicate straps of the heels. It must’ve taken ages to get them on. It really _was_ impractical to ask somebody who couldn’t even touch their own feet anymore to wear them for ages.

“Claire really doesn’t get the pregnancy thing, does she?” he commented, slightly annoyed on Lily’s behalf. “These are—”

He jumped; his words severed. The loud sound of a camera clicking behind them startled him. He glanced over his shoulder at Dominique—the wedding photographer and only person permitted to have a camera at the event—and sighed.

“Aww,” Dominique said. “That’s going to be an adorable photo. Caden helps Lily take off her shoes.”

“Fuck you, Dom!” Lily yelled after her retreating back. “Come back and let me shove this heel up your arse!”

“No thanks!” Dom sang.

Lily huffed. She yanked her foot out of Caden’s hands a second later. “I can do it. Don’t help me.”

He sighed. “How are you going to do it? There’s no way you’ve got your wand on you.” Everybody had checked their wand in upon arriving for security reasons.

“I don’t know, but I’ll fucking do it, okay?” she snapped. Her pride clearly injured, she shooed him away again and made to lean over. Caden sat back and watched with deep frustration as she struggled to reach the straps. There was no way she was going to do it alone. But he knew better than to step in when she’d told him not to. She struggled for another minute or so. He saw angry tears forming in her eyes. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“Look,” he said firmly. He reached out again and made quick work of the straps on her left shoe. He ignored the light kicks she sent his way with her other foot. “You’re fucking huge. You can’t do what you used to. You’re going to have to get over it and let people help you. Merlin, can’t you just enjoy being waited on?”

She lightly kicked him again. “No! I’m _not_ an invalid!”

“You know who you sound like right now? Your brother,” Caden pointed out. Albus’s favorite line when his parents were bugging him about his bleeding disorder was _I’m not an invalid_!

That sobered Lily up quickly. “I do not,” she muttered, but her voice had softened.

In one fourth of the time she’d spent struggling, he’d undone both shoes. They fell to the floor. He moved back up into the seat beside Lily’s. “You have to let people do stuff for you.”

“I _refuse_.”

“You have to let _me_ do stuff for you, then.”

“But I’m not—”

“Lily.”

He stared at her intently. After a long moment, she looked away.

“We can spend the next few weeks bickering and fighting any time you need help—and you’re _going_ to need help—or you can just agree to let me help you. It’s _okay_. I did this to you, right? So you can consider this my penance.”

He gave her pride an out, and thankfully, she took it.

“I guess,” she muttered. She let her head fall against his shoulder, so he knew she wasn’t really angry with him. He reached up and pulled his fingers through her lovely hair.

“It was a _beautiful_ ceremony,” he heard himself say firmly. And it had been.

“It was,” she agreed, a bit reluctantly. She tapped his calf with her foot. “I saw you crying.”

“Was not. It was spring allergies.”

“Liar.”

“Prove it.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He leaned over and kissed her. He felt her smile against his lips. In the background, the Pumpkin Pasties’s song switched over to a slower Butterbeer in Boston ballad, and the noise from the crowd quieted slightly. He reached up and held her face in his hands gently; when their eyes opened and he looked at her again, the multicolored light from the different colored flames dancing in candelabras above their heads made her look even more beautiful than she usually did. He felt a deep ache in his heart, one of such longing and craving that he couldn’t have even determined what exactly he craved, though he knew it had to do with her.

“I love you,” he heard himself say softly. He hadn’t planned the words, but they came out sounding perfectly timed and intended.

She smiled. It softened her expression. Her brown eyes were warm as they poured into his. “I love you, too. Getting soft on me?”

The deep longing in his heart spread. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Her smile turned a bit wicked. She leaned in slightly. She set her hands on top of his, which were still cradling her face, and stroked the backs of them with her thumbs. Just that simple touch sent shocks of pleasure down his spine. “Oh, I know that look,” she said mischievously. She kissed his bottom lip with aching slowness; she traced her nose against his right afterwards. Her next words brushed against his lips as she spoke. “Are we really going to do this? Fuck in the toilets when I’m seven months pregnant?”

They were certainly going to make an attempt. They both knew it. He felt an insatiable urge to take her lips again and slide his hands up her dress right where they were sitting. His emotions had always been so tightly wound to his physical attraction, and now, sitting in such a romantic setting, thinking at the back of his mind that he very much wanted to share a ceremony like this one day with _her_ , he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. And his desire seemed to cheer her up more than any of his words ever had.

“It’s either the toilets or the table,” he heard himself mutter. She arched an eyebrow, but her lips curved back up into a smirk. Her small hands found their way inside his suit jacket before he could even blink. He shivered as she pulled his shirt free from his trousers.

“C’mon, then,” she told him.

He was certain that they looked mad—Lily hurrying barefoot across the dance floor, Caden making a determined beeline right alongside her, them both stumbling laughing into the toilets—but he didn’t give a shit. He just loved her. _Her_. All her faults and all her beauty—everything. Maybe it made him mad. Maybe he didn’t care. He never had.

* * *

 

“You’re in a better mood!” Aster said gleefully. She smiled hugely as Lily came over to sit in her rightful Maid of Honor seat. Caden clapped Hugo on the back as he took his assigned seat. He was careful to avoid Lily’s eyes for fear they’d end up making eyes at each other again. He was thankful for the distance between their seats, though she was quick to kick his feet from across the table. He bit back his smile and kicked back.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” Lily answered as if that explained everything.

Aster knew Lily better than most. She arched an eyebrow and glanced quickly between Lily and Caden. “Sure. I’m sure that’s why you’re in a better mood. Regardless, welcome back! Glad you’re feeling more like yourself. Cake?”

“Always. Always cake,” Lily said seriously.

The two scampered off giggling. Caden smiled at his friend.

“Well? How’s it feel?” he asked.

Hugo sighed dreamily. “Better than I even imagined. I imagined it a lot.”

Caden’s smile grew. “I’m happy for you, mate.”

Hugo slung an arm over Caden’s shoulders. “I’m happy for _you_ , too.”

Caden shrugged. “I’m not the one who got married.”

“You sort of are.”

Those words stuck with Caden for the rest of the night. Even as he was catching up with acquaintances from Hogwarts and dancing around with little Delilah, the words were at the back of his mind. He understood what Hugo had meant, even if Hugo hadn’t said it, and he thought that maybe he was right.

* * *

 

_TWO MONTHS LATER_

He woke at dawn to the sound of something extremely heavy hitting the floor. At first, he assumed it was Big Boy chasing moonbeams again, but through his sleepy haze he made out the sound of his girlfriend cursing beneath her breath. He sat straight up.

“Lily?” he asked, his heart pounding fast. He glanced over towards her side of the bed, but it was empty. He fought the blankets from his legs and hurried towards the continued thudding noise breaking through the silence of night. He stepped into the living room, halfway expecting to find her in labor on the sofa, but instead he was greeted by the sight of his heavily pregnant girlfriend wielding a muggle hammer.

“It’s the middle of the night!” he said incredulously.

Lily looked up. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion. Whatever the fuck she was trying to put together clearly wasn’t going very well. “Good job, Caden. When it’s dark, it’s nighttime. When it’s light outside, it’s daytime.” She slammed the hammer down on the wooden structure again.

He recognized that this was Lily’s own brand of ‘nesting’. But when the structure swayed ominously towards her, threatening to squash her where she was standing, he found it difficult to indulge it. He darted forward and narrowly managed to catch the wooden frame before it folded in and collapsed on Lily. She was unruffled.

“Nice catch,” she said as if nothing had happened.

“What the fuck _is this_?” he groaned, sagging a bit under the weight of the structure.

Lily appraised the structure. She bit down on a muggle nail and squinted at the frame, trying to decide the best place to put the nail to make the structure stand upright again.

“It’s a playpen,” she answered shortly. “Here, push this end up, will you?”

Groaning and out of breath, Caden threw all his weight into his right shoulder and used that side to lift the indicated end. He stared in confusion as she put in a few more nails.

“Lily, we’ve got _three_ playpens! One for here, one for your office, one for the tent! Babies aren’t even _near_ this size! This looks like a sodding cottage!”

“Oh, not for the babies,” Lily said. She slammed another nail into the wooden planks. “For Big Boy. I’ve been up all night thinking about it, and I realized we can’t very well let him roam the house freely once the babies start walking. He could accidentally step on them. So he needs his own playpen, so when the babies are out of their playpens, he can go into his, and that way we don’t have to worry about him actually squashing our human children.” The structure gave another dangerous groan. “Oh, fuck! Lift that side up again!”

Sweating now from the exertion, Caden lifted it again, his sleepy mind working fast to figure out how to deal with this. Ginny told him that he _had_ to let her do whatever she needed to do to work through the last stretch of this pregnancy. Lily’s parents had been here for two weeks now and we’re planning on staying ‘til the babies were here and for a bit afterwards. And he trusted Ginny’s judgment, but _this_ situation seemed a bit…ridiculous. The muggle way was a bit foolhardy and she seemed to be _one_ misplaced nail away from being knocked unconscious by the recklessly massive “pen”.

“Okay, I understand what you’re saying,” he began, his words a bit tense as he struggled to support the pen. “And this is a nice solution. But do you really think _you_ should be out here alone in the middle of the night doing this without magic?”

She slammed another nail into the structure. “Yep.”

“I know you’ve been magically exhausted. It’s a lot, all the magic you’ve got to do during the day now. But you can just ask me for help and I can use magic to get this made and—”

“No, I want to do it _this way_ ,” she insisted stubbornly.

Caden narrowly avoided having to be the one to argue with her about this. He sensed somebody’s presence over his shoulder and glanced around. Harry was standing in the doorway in his pajamas, his glasses askew and an incredulous look on his face.

“Lily Luna Potter! What are you _doing_?!” he exclaimed. Caden guessed he’d heard the ruckus all the way from the guest house.

“I’m building a pen for Big Boy,” Lily answered shortly. She attempted to heft the structure up higher; Caden quickly assisted with as much strength as he could muster.

“No, you’re not! First of all, you have no idea how to build something the Muggle way! Look at that! It’s two seconds away from collapsing!” It was. “Secondly, you’re nearly full-term with _twins_ , Lulu!”

“So?! I can do what I please, and I’m _tired_ of you telling me otherwise!”

“No, you can’t!”

“Yes, I can!”

“Not if you want those babies to be alive and healthy! You’re going to hurt them, Lily!”

That sobered her up slightly. Her grip loosened. Caden grunted as more weight fell down onto his shoulders. Thankfully, Harry had thought to bring his wand along to investigate (Caden hadn’t) and cast a quick hovering charm. Once Caden stepped out from underneath the pen and pulled Lily out from underneath it too, Harry set it gently on the carpet. Lily was _furious_. She refused to even look at them.

“You’ve got to stop this, Lily,” Harry said, voicing what Caden had been thinking for a week now. “The reckless stuff has _got_ to stop. You’re going to hurt yourself, or them, or knock yourself into labor.”

She turned her nose up into the air and crossed her arms tightly over her massive stomach. “I know.”

“Oh, you ‘know’? Are you _trying_ to hurt yourself?” challenged Harry.

“No,” Lily snapped.

Caden understood. “You’re trying to knock yourself into labor.”

Lily didn’t respond. Harry sighed and ran his hands through his messy hair.

“Lily, Scorpius has already talked to you about that. The longer you can keep them in there, the better it is for them, and he doesn’t think it’s safe to have them before your scheduled time; that time itself is already technically early. You’ve only got five days left until the procedure. _Five days_. Then Scorpius will be here and the babies will be born. But if you knock yourself into real labor before then, you’ll probably end up having to have them the normal way with a Healer you don’t know. Is that what you want?”

She muttered something Caden didn’t catch.

“You’re _supposed_ to be on bed rest,” Harry reminded Lily sharply. “You’re not even supposed to be walking around except to get to the loo. So I’m not sure why you think it’s okay to do Muggle construction in the middle of the night.”

“I wasn’t walking around. Building happens in one spot.”

“Don’t get smart with me. You _know_ that doesn’t count as bed rest.”

Lily collapsed down onto the sofa behind them. She buried her face in her hands. “I _hate it_. I can’t _stand_ staying in bed. I’m going to lose my mind.”

Caden thought bed rest was a cruel and unusual punishment for Lily and hadn’t ever thought she’d be able to comply. For him, the day had been safe and successful if he kept her from wrestling dragons. But Harry grew more and more concerned with Lily’s health as every day passed and was taking Scorpius’s “rules” very seriously. For once, _he_ seemed far stricter than Ginny did (Ginny also recognized that bed rest was a bit of a stretch for Lily.)

“You can do _anything_ for five days,” Harry persisted. “Including remaining in bed.”

Lily probably would’ve kept arguing, but Ginny and Big Boy entered the room a second or so later. Big Boy—quite fond of Ginny, as most animals seemed to be—had been sleeping on the floor beside her side of the bed in the guest house. He’d initially been a bit freaked out by the presence of ‘strangers’ in the home but had warmed up remarkably quickly, much to Caden’s relief. He loved Big Boy, but the babies’ safety was most important, and if Big Boy couldn’t even handle accepting Lily’s parents, he wasn’t sure he’d feel comfortable attempting to introduce him to the children at any point. He _was_ a dragon, after all, even if he liked to snooze on the sofa and eat hamburgers.

Ginny stopped in the doorway. Her eyes swept over the ridiculous structure on the carpet.

“Lily, what the hell?” Ginny finally greeted, her voice flat.

“It’s a ‘pen’ for Big Boy,” Harry muttered dryly. He lifted up the hammer she’d been using. “The Muggle way!”

Ginny stared at Lily like she’d grown an extra head. “Lily. Go to bed. For Merlin’s sake…”

“ _Ugh_!” Lily cried. She hoisted herself up using the sofa arm for support and then stormed off as angrily as she could manage. Caden sighed.

“Five more days. Just _five_ more days…” he reminded himself quietly. He thought he’d probably have just a hard a time as Lily would.

His girlfriend’s mother patted his shoulder as he passed.

“You can do it. It’ll all seem worth it once they’re here, I _promise_.”

He really, really hoped Lily felt that way.

* * *

 

He woke to the sound of rustling papers. He rolled over with a groan, and when he felt the crinkle of parchment beneath him, he wasn’t surprised.

“Oi! Watch it!” Lily complained, annoyed. He felt her fingers wedge between his chest and the sheets. She pried a length of parchment free. “I’m onto something here! I have to mail this to Evvie!”

He rolled over onto his back, freeing the remaining documents beneath him. He blinked awake and stared at the explosion of books, self-inking quills, and parchment on their bed. He couldn’t find even a centimeter of open space anywhere. It seemed Lily had woken up determined to channel her frustration into her lime pox work instead of muggle structure building. Caden was glad.

He finished examining the parchment closest to his view—it was covered with odd equations and graphs—and then glanced over at his girlfriend. His eyes were automatically drawn to her stomach before anything else, with its massive size, and he spotted her shirt jump slightly as the babies moved about and kicked. They were so cramped that he could nearly constantly see them from the outside now, something that had once been extremely shocking and cool, but now he was used to it. He pushed letters and paper out of his way and scooted over to her. She hardly seemed to notice when he leaned into to kiss her cheek. He let his hand rest atop her belly and pressed his cheek against hers. Lily continued writing.

“Stop being so sweet. I’m annoyed.”

He didn’t budge. “Annoyed with _me_?”

“Yes.” The scratching of her quill increased in volume as if she were pressing down harder in her annoyance.

“For…?” he pressed, not the least bit bothered. She was often annoyed with him these days. He swept his thumb gently over the soft fabric of her shirt and nuzzled her cheek with his nose. She shoved him away with her shoulder.

“Piss off! No nuzzling!” She smacked at his hand. “No belly rubbing!”

He obliged and moved a few inches back. His hand fell down onto the bed beside her. “Did I breathe too loudly last night or something?”

“You know what you did,” she said stubbornly. “Hmph.”

“I…didn’t want you to do manual labor in the living room when you’re supposed to be on bed rest?” he guessed.

“Yes. You’re bossing me around and I _don’t_ like it.”

Exasperated, Caden said: “I think you’re confusing me with your dad. Which is gross. I didn’t boss you around at all. Your dad is the one that yelled at you.”

“And you didn’t defend me! You went right along with him!”

“I don’t recall that.”

She pressed down so hard on the parchment in her hands that her quill poked right through it. She angrily balled it up and threw it onto the floor. She was scowling as she unrolled another bit of parchment.

“You’ve been doing it ever since they came here. Teaming up with him against me when _I’m_ your girlfriend and _I’m_ horribly disfigured because I’m having _your_ sodding alien babies and—”

“ _Disfigured_?” he quoted incredulously. “That’s a really harsh word to use.”

She turned and pinned him with such a fiery look that he automatically backed up a bit. The heat of her rage was impressive. She let her parchment rest on her thighs, looked him dead in the eye, and yanked her pajama shirt up.

“Dis-fucking- _figured_ ,” she repeated darkly. “ _Deformed._ It’s horrifying!”

To be fair, he would have probably described the size of her stomach as grotesquely huge. But ‘disfigured’ seemed a bit dramatic.

“It’s just a belly, Lily.”

“This isn’t ‘just’ anything!” she cried, growing angrier and angrier with each second. She gripped the mountainous swell of her stomach with both hands. “This shouldn’t be physically _possible_! My stomach’s bigger than _me_!”

“If you measured your height and compared it to—”

“Oh, shut up!” she snapped. “You know what I mean! I topple forward because it’s so massive and _heavy_!”

“Yeah, well, there are two infants in there.”

“And it’s time for them to get the fuck _out_. I pissed myself this morning. It’s _not_ okay and it’s not fair. I look like this—freakish and disturbing—and you just look like _you_. _I’m_ supposed to be the one who’s out of your league and now you look like you’re a solid nine and I’m lagging way back as a solid _two_ —”

“I’m a nine? And you’re out of my league? So that makes you…what? A ten?” he challenged. He arched an eyebrow teasingly.

She didn’t rise to his bait. She was clearly far too annoyed to indulge his invitation to banter.

“I’m going to be ugly _forever_ ,” she complained.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Somehow you even make something that’s about you even _more_ about you. You’re not ugly now and you won’t be ugly then. That’s mad.”

“I’m _disfig—”_

“You are not! You’re pregnant!”

“Well, it _sucks_!”

“Well, it’s nearly over! You don’t even have a week left! And you never, ever have to do it again!”

She looked at him seriously. “I’m _not_. I’m serious about getting that procedure done after they pull the babies out. No more. No more babies, no more huge infants inside me, no more peeing on myself, no more rib-kicking.”

“Couldn’t agree more.”

Lily nodded once, satisfied with his answer. Caden rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of their bedroom. He loved her, and he already loved those babies—and it surprised him every day how that was possible, how his heart could already feel so full at the mere _thought_ of them—but there was no denying how exhausting this entire experience had been for both of them. He didn’t think he would ever miss it, and he knew Lily probably felt the same way.

“That’s settled, then,” he said. He yawned. “Wake me up when you stop blaming me for things your dad said.”

“You agree with him, Caden!”

“Maybe I do. But I didn’t _say it_. He did.”

“And you didn’t defend me!”

“Because he’s _right_! You _shouldn’t_ be building dragon playpens in the living room when you’re full term with twins, Lily! I can’t believe me thinking that—when it’s true—is somehow being viewed as a betrayal!”

“It’s my body! It’s not right for you to…to…”

“To have an opinion about you not getting injured?”

“To micromanage me!”

“Oh, Merlin,” he said tiredly. He realized no amount of arguing was going to make her behave rationally right now, and despite the fact that she clearly wanted to argue, he didn’t. “I’m going back to sleep.”

He rolled over so his back was to her. A second later, he felt her poke him between the shoulder blades with her quill.

“I’m not an incubator. It isn’t fair,” she persisted. He knew her boredom was _really_ driving her to force a fight, but he _refused_.

“I never said you were an incubator and you know it. I have never come _close_ to treating you like that and you know that, too. Goodnight.”

She poked him again. “Caden.”

“No. I’m not fighting with you. Go play Exploding Snap or something if you’re bored. Consider me _officially_ burned out when it comes to fighting with you.”

“ _Caden_.”

“Shh!”

She cursed under her breath. He ignored it.

“When you think up something I can do to make you feel better rather than taking out your frustration on me for things I never even did, wake me up.”

She was quiet for a peaceful five minutes or so. He was nearly asleep again when he felt the bed shift. Paper crinkled as she rolled over onto it. He felt her stomach press into his back.

“Yes?” he asked patiently, his eyes still shut.

Her arm draped over his waist. She pressed her face against the back of his neck. Her breath was warm when she spoke.

“This makes me feel better.”

Her mood swings had long ago stopped confusing him. He was just going with it. “Good. Me too.”

Her body was warm and snuggly against his. He wanted to turn around and wrap her up in his arms, but he knew better than to push his luck.

“I feel like I could crawl out of my own skin,” she admitted a while later. He could hear the genuine frustration and impatience in her voice. “I feel like I may explode.”

She was certainly experiencing a lot of extreme emotions, especially when she couldn’t cope with them in any of the ways she normally did (physical exertion, reckless, wild actions, etc.)

“I know. I really wish I could make it better for you,” he said softly.

She sighed. “I know you do.”

“You’ve only got a few more days,” he reminded her again.

“I don’t think I can do it. I feel so horrible.”

He hated that she was miserable, but there wasn’t much to be done for it at this point. “I know,” he repeated. He reached back and stroked her hair. “You can do it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just know. You’ve just got to trust me.”

“Make me,” she said automatically, stubbornness weaved through her words. His suggestive response was reflexive.

“If it wouldn’t knock you right into labor, I so would,” he promised.

“Maybe I _want_ to go into labor.”

“You say that _now_ …but I don’t think it’d be very fun.”

“It’s not going to be fun no matter what,” she said, and for one of the first times, he heard genuine fear in her voice. There was a pause. “I really need you with me.”

“Of course I’ll be with you,” he said automatically. “I’ll be there the entire time, at your side.”

“You can’t go anywhere. You have to be _here_.”

He didn’t understand. “Of course I’m here. I live here, Lily. You’re my family.”

“I mean _here_ ,” she stressed again, scooting closer to him. “Emotionally and mentally and _every way_.” There was a short pause. “I’m really scared.”

He had wondered when she’d admit it. As the day grew closer, he knew her nerves must’ve been growing stronger, too. He was so busy worrying about her—and wishing desperately for the ‘bed rest’ shit to be over—that he had hardly gave himself time to come to terms with the fact that he was merely _five days_ away from being a dad.

“You’re going to nail it, Lily,” he told her gently. “Scorpius will take good care of you during the surgery, and I’ll take good care of you afterwards, and it’ll all be okay.”

“What if something goes wrong? And I die?”

He faltered. He hadn’t even considered that. “You won’t.”

“But what if I did?”

“You _won’t_.”

“But what if I _did_?”

Realizing he would _never_ out-stubborn her, he relented and allowed himself to think about it. “I’d be…I would…” he felt his eyes burn immediately. He cleared his throat and steeled himself before continuing. “I would take care of them. You know I would.”

“All alone?”

“I wouldn’t go marry Wendy if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Because I don’t want you to fuck anybody else or marry anybody else or have babies with anybody else.”

“Even if you’re dead?” he challenged.

“Yes. Even if I’m dead.” She sounded quite serious.

“And if I die? What would you do?”

She scoffed. “Dedicate my entire life to my dragons. Sex is objectively somewhat of a distraction, anyway.”

“You’d stay celibate.” He couldn’t hide his skepticism.

“I’ve tried fucking other people. It sucked. I didn’t like it,” she answered shortly. She intertwined their fingers absentmindedly. “I like fucking _you._ So what would you do?”

He sighed. “For fuck’s sake, Lily. You want me to plan out my exact sequence of reactions if you died in childbirth? I imagine I’d be depressed for a really long time.”

“But what about the babies?”

“What about them?”

“Who would take care of them?”

“ _Me_ ,” he repeated, growing slightly frustrated. He didn’t like the conversation topic, and it was incredibly strange to themselves in a situation where _Lily_ was forcing a difficult emotional conversation and _he_ was trying to deflect it. “I already said that.”

“All by yourself?”

“No. Your parents and siblings would never permit that and you know it.”

“Okay. So you would always keep them with you? You wouldn’t send them to live with anybody else? And you’d run my sanctuary? And you’d make sure the twins know my dragons? And you’d make sure they know how cool I was?” she asked.

“Yes. Of _course_ ,” he said. “You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?”

“Bed rest leaves a lot of time to worry,” she grumbled. She huffed. “Okay. What if one of them dies?”

“Oh, c’mon, Lily,” he complained, his stomach clenching uneasily. “Do we have to do this?”

“Yes! Because I’m worried and I just need to know what I _do_ if these things happen!”

“Merlin, Lily. I don’t know. I suppose we cry and mourn and focus on raising the other.”

“Would we tell them that they had a twin?”

“I…sure. Yeah. When they could handle it.”

“What if I get really depressed, like how I was after my dragon babies died?”

“I’ll get you through it like I got you through that. And you’ll get me through it, too. And we’ll be okay.”

“Okay.” He braced himself. He knew what was coming next. “What if they _both_ —”

“Lily. Not going to happen.”

“But what if it _did_?” she persisted, and the way her voice wobbled told Caden this was probably the _real_ worry she’d been working up the courage to voice. “What if it did and what if you couldn’t even stand to look at me anymore because it made you think about _them_ and what if it turns out to have been my fault somehow and you resent me for ruining your only chance at having a family and what if I get depressed again and push you away and—”

He turned over to face her and kissed the side of her mouth, effectively stilling her panicked words. He let his cheek rest against hers afterwards.

“Never going to happen,” he repeated calmly. “Here’s what _is_ going to happen: you’ll have our babies, it’ll be sort of sucky for a few days afterwards—what with surgery recovery and brand-new babies—we’ll probably get a bit delirious from lack of sleep, but I think we’ll also be over the moon with love, and within two months, I bet we’re back romping around the wilderness together, us and the twins.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“What—did Gantha send you another memory of the future?”

“Nah. Don’t need it. We saw what we did, and that’s proof that everything goes right.”

“But the future is never set in stone,” Lily said nervously. “It can always change. I remember Gantha saying that in our fourth year. It was September. It was cloudy outside.”

He shook his head. He wasn’t sure where his certainty was coming from, but he believed every word he said with absolute conviction. “Nah. What we saw was set in stone. That was right. And Lily, they were so happy and healthy. They wouldn’t have been that way unless we did a _stellar_ job.”

She took a deep, steadying breath. For a few minutes afterwards, they rested in silence. Then:

“No matter what happens, at least I’ll be out of this fucking bed,” she muttered sourly.

“That’s the spirit.”

* * *

 

The day before the “big day” _finally_ arrived. They were supposed to be up early that morning to meet Hugo, Aster, Albus, Scorpius, and Lyra at the Portkey point, but Lily was reluctant to get out of bed. Caden woke at the time they’d discussed and tried six times—unsuccessfully—to coax Lily from bed as he got ready for the day, but he wasn’t making much progress.

“Lily,” he tried a final time. He finished lacing his boots and sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned over and prodded the Lily-shaped lump beneath the many, many blankets piled on the bed. “C’mon. The day’s finally here. Everybody’s arriving. You’ve wanted Aster here for ages.”

She made a vague sound that was either a grumble or a groan. Caden checked his wristwatch nervously. He didn’t want to be late. Their visitors had yet to visit their newly built house and couldn’t apparate there because of that, and even if they _could_ follow verbal directions to the sanctuary, they’d have no hope of getting past the dragons without help.

“I’m going to splash you with cold water,” he threatened half-heartedly. He prodded her again. She had been up late having another ‘subtle meltdown’ (as he’d come to recognize them.) She’d spent five hours pacing the nurseries, supposedly “putting things away”, though the nurseries had been ready for at least two weeks. He had helped her “sort socks” for an hour around midnight but had eventually returned to bed and left her to her mission. She had returned to bed rather late, and he guessed that was part of her reluctance to wake up currently. He waited five seconds, and then he lifted the thick layer of covers and drew them back from her head. She had her face pressed into the pillow; her bright hair fanned out around her like a halo. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. It felt incredibly hot from being beneath the covers. “Seriously, you’ve been sleeping for _ages_. C’mon. You were practically dancing with excitement about today just last night.”

Lily turned her face over a bit, but she didn’t open her eyes. “Go without me,” she mumbled.

He frowned. “What? Why?”

“Don’t feel well. My head hurts really badly.”

He shifted closer. “Yeah? I’ll go get you some pain potion.”

“Mm’kay,” she said weakly. He helped her sit up. He pressed his hand gently against her neck.

“You need to take some of these blankets off,” he said. “You’re burning up.”

“Okay,” she agreed at once. Just like that. Not an argument in sight. Caden felt deep concern settle on his spine. He leaned in and peered into her eyes. She _almost_ looked back at him, but her gaze was off by a millimeter or so. He distractedly reached over onto the nightstand and handed her her glasses. Her hand shook slightly as she pushed them into her face. He expected her eyes to meet his fully now that she could see and her depth perception wasn’t wonky, but once her glasses were on, she blinked rapidly.

“What? Something in your eye?” he wondered.

She slid her glasses down and rubbed hard at her eyes. She pushed her glasses back up and peered through the lenses again. A little line appeared between her eyes.

“It’s blurry,” she said.

He furrowed his brow, too. “What? Even with your glasses on?”

“It wasn’t last night. They always work. My glasses always work.”

His concern intensified a bit. He wasn’t really sure _why_ —objectively, it was just a headache, and poor eyesight wasn’t exactly unusual for Lily—but he felt like something wasn’t right. Right as he was about to ask another question about her sudden eyesight issues, he heard a knock at the bedroom door.

“Knock, knock,” Ginny called from the other side. “You two ready?”

“We’re going to stay here,” Caden called, his mind still on Lily’s weird behavior. “You two go ahead.”

“You’re sure? Everything all right?” Ginny pressed. “You’ll miss lunch. Harry and I are taking them to that restaurant downtown.”

“I’m sure. Lily’s tired. We may meet you at the restaurant later if she’s feeling up to it.”

Lily wasn’t saying a word about him speaking for both of them, and that was odder than her changing eyesight. Caden watched as she kneaded over her temples with a grimace.

“All right! Get some rest, Lulu,” Ginny said.

Lily moved to lie down again. Caden pulled her glasses from her face and returned them to the bedside table.

“I’ll get some pain potion,” he decided uneasily. “Be right back.”

He left the bedroom door wide open, sent Big Boy in there to keep an eye on her, and then gathered the emerald bottle of potion as quickly as he could. When he returned, he was startled to find Big Boy cuddled up to Lily’s side, without even one complaint or dirty look from Lily. She _never_ let Big Boy on the bed.

“Okay, you’re freaking me out,” he greeted. He crossed the space between them and crawled up on the bed. Big Boy gave him a nasty look and curled his tail protectively around Lily. Caden looked at the dragon in surprise. “Seriously? You’re looking at _me_ like that? I hand-feed you steak!”

But Big Boy was worried. If he could have spoken, he would’ve said as much. He kept his protective posture and kept nuzzling his snout against Lily’s belly. Caden’s heart began thumping oddly from anxiety.

“I think we should go to hospital,” he heard himself say.

He expected her to argue. He expected her to scoff: ‘Hospital? For a _headache_?’ But she didn’t even seem to really process what he’d said. Her hand pressed against the right side of her stomach, her express still furrowed from discomfort.

“It hurts,” she told him. She sounded confused. She looked towards him and met his eyes. “Why does it hurt?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s normal,” he worried. He felt even more alarmed when she scooted back down a bit as if she’d decided to go back to sleep. He caught her beneath the armpits and pulled her back up. “No, I don’t think you should go to sleep.”

“I think I’m just tired.”

“Maybe so, but I think we ought to have you checked out.”

She tried to slide down again to lie back down, but Caden tightened his hold and kept her upright. She squirmed in his grasps.

“There’s no point going all the way to hospital,” she insisted, “Scorpius will be here in a bit; we can wait ‘til then, I just need to sleep.”

“I don’t think you should,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure why he thought it, but he was entirely certain that she mustn’t.

She didn’t respond. She kneaded over her upper right side; her eyes drifted shut again. Caden shook her.

“C’mon. Let’s at least go to Scorpius. We can meet them at the restaurant.”

“Fine,” she said. “But I just need to sleep.”

He basically dragged her from the bed. He pulled on her arms and helped her upright.

“You got it?” he checked. Her eyelids had drifted shut again. His heart clenched. “Lily. Lily, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’m just resting my eyes,” she mumbled. “I’ve got it.”

“You’ve got it?”

“I’ve got it. I’m fine.”

Hesitantly, he dropped her arms. He took a step towards the door. She moved forward as if to follow him, but instead, she swayed horribly on her feet. Caden inhaled sharply, but by the time he’d reached out to her, her legs had already given out from beneath her. He managed to keep her from collapsing down completely, but she was dead weight and hardly conscious. His heart was pounding. He felt oddly disconnected from his own body as he began reacting without thinking; he hoisted her back up, half-carried, half-dragged her over to the fireplace in their room, and snatched the container of Floo powder off the mantel. He folded them both into the fireplace and threw a handful down. He said the name of the best hospital as clearly as he could manage, held tightly onto Lily as they traveled through the Floo, and then struggled to keep from falling over as they slammed down into the hospital’s emergency receiving area. Within seconds, Healers and mediwitches were there, questions flowing out of them at an overwhelming rate as they pulled Lily from Caden’s arms and levitated her onto a stretcher.

“What happened?” a Healer asked. He wasn’t even sure. It had all happened so quickly.

“She—she didn’t feel well, she had a headache, and her side hurt, and she couldn’t stay awake, and her eyes were blurry—blurrier than normal, I mean—and then she stood and she just…”

He broke off. His heart felt like it was lodged in his throat, beating so hard he could hardly breathe around it. He felt somebody touch his shoulder, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lily. Three Healers were around her now—one had their wand tip pressed to her inner wrist, another was doing a scanning spell on the babies, and one was monitoring her pulse. He was shaking and couldn’t seem to stop; had he ever been this terrified before?

The Healers grouped around her turned and began pushing the stretcher towards the corridor quickly. He followed without being invited or told, certain that he would fight somebody if they dared to tell him that he _couldn’t_ , and he had never really been one for fighting. He caught up with them outside of the room they were swerving the stretcher into. He pushed in and stood to the side as the Healers spoke, feeling strangely invisible, like maybe this was a bad dream and it wasn’t really happening.

“Her blood pressure’s off the charts.”

“Seizures are imminent if they haven’t already happened.”

“She’s far along enough to induce.”

“It’s safest.”

Before he could really process what they’d even said—or much less, speak up for Lily when she couldn’t speak up for herself and inform them of her wishes—the mediwitch had vanished her pajama bottoms and propped her legs up, like they were prepping her to deliver right that very moment.

“Oi!” he heard himself say. Somehow, it seemed wrong to him: them removing her clothes and deciding something as personal as how the babies would be born without even speaking with her. They weren’t even her Healers. “Can’t we wait until her Healer gets here? He’s not far, let me send a Patronus to him, she’s already decided how she wants to have them—”

Finally, somebody turned to address him. “Time is of the essence. Send a Patronus now; we’ll monitor her as long as we’re able, but surely you want us to go ahead and deliver should things get worse?”

 He faltered. “I—of course I want them to be okay, but that’s not my decision—”

“Are you the father?”

“I am.”

“Then it is your decision. She’s unconscious. What do you want us to do?”

He felt like _he_ might pass out. He hated making decisions and here he was faced with an unfair choice, one that would—at best—make Lily feel as if he’d completely disregarded either her wishes or her health, and—at worst—make him the one responsible for the decisions that led to death.

“She wants our brother-in-law to deliver them. He’s doing it surgically. That’s what she wants.” He could hardly breathe. “Let me—let me contact him. Don’t do anything. Give me a second. Just a second.”

He knew his voice was shaking as he sent a Patronus to Scorpius, then to Ginny, then to Harry, and _then_ to Albus, to make sure that his message wasn’t missed. When he turned back around, Healers were grouped at her propped up knees, discussing something about words he only barely knew. He felt utterly helpless. Lily _looked_ utterly helpless. He was walking over to stand at her side when he spotted her eyes moving beneath her eyelids. He felt his heart rise a bit. Her eyelids fluttered open, and for a moment, she didn’t move. She took in her surroundings, her propped up legs, her nearly-bare second half, and clearly made the assumption that they were indeed prepping her to birth the babies right then and there. Before Caden could say a word, she moved her leg back and kicked at the Healer who had a hand on her calf. She jumped away from Lily, alarmed.

“You are _not_ my Healer!” Lily shrieked. She seemed terribly disoriented and agitated. She looked down at her bare legs. “Where are my bloody pajamas?!”

The Healers all attempted to soothe her by explaining what was happening, but Lily was far too worked up to process any of it. Her chest was heaving with panicked breaths. Her eyes darted around the room until finally landing on Caden. He hurried over to her side. He didn’t care if she hit him or cursed him or kicked him—he just knew he had _promised_ that he would be here with her.

“She is _not_ my Healer!” Lily told him. The anxiety in her tone was palpable. Caden reached for her hand, halfway expecting her to slap his away, but she gripped on with desperate strength.

“I told them to wait. I contacted Scorpius. Something isn’t right, Lily—something about seizures, I don’t know, but it has to be now.”

Her eyes widened slightly. He could see the flames from the hovering candelabra reflected in her wide, brown eyes; they were glassy with terrified tears. “ _Now_?”

He nodded. He wanted to cry and he wanted to tell her how scared he had been and still was, but he knew the only thing he could really do for her right now was remain calm.

“Yes. But it’s going to be okay.”

She shook her head quickly. She looked a bit hysterical. “No! No, it’s not going to be! Scorpius isn’t here! And today isn’t _the day_! Tomorrow is the day! Scorpius said it wasn’t safe to do it before the day! I’m not ready yet! I changed my mind! I don’t have my bag! What happened—why is something wrong?! Are they okay? I can’t— _DON’T TOUCH ME_!”

The Healer who’d set a hand on her stomach jumped a few feet back in fright. Lily draped her left arm over her stomach as if to shield it but kept her right hand in Caden’s. The Healer exchanged a look with another Healer. Caden saw that one nod. Fearing they would give Lily something to calm her down without even asking, Caden attempted to calm her down himself.

“They’re just trying to check on the babies, that’s all.”

“That’s not all! I didn’t say they could touch me! They can’t just touch me without asking! They are _not_ my Healer, I don’t know them!”

He felt a mediwitch touch his elbow. He glanced behind and met her eyes.

“Agitation is a common side effect of her condition. This is very serious.”

He knew what they were planning before they’d even said a word.

“Don’t give her a Calming Draught. Don’t give her anything. She just wants her Healer. He’ll be here in a moment.”

“And as we’ve already told you—we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Get _away_!” Lily yelled again. Caden turned back around; another Healer had attempted to set their hands on her closed knees, and Lily wasn’t having it. She’d clenched her legs together and looked seconds away from kicking this Healer in the face.

“We need to see if labor has started. Our scan indicates that you might be having contractions. Are you having contractions?”

“How the hell would I know that?! I’ve never been in labor before! I’ve never had contractions before! I feel like shit and— _I SAID DON’T TOUCH ME_!”

“Okay,” Caden said, his patience snapping. He shoved his way between the end of Lily’s stretcher and the Healers, forcing the one who’d reached out to her again to take a step back. Anger overwrote his anxiety quickly; it had been a long time since he’d felt himself get that angry in such a short span of time. “Back up! You’re not listening and she’s going to kick you in your faces. I promise you she will.”

The Healers exchanged another look.

“Sir, if you want what’s best for her, you’ll let us give her a Calming Draught so we can do our jobs and make her better.”

Caden’s heart was pounding. “How serious is this? Can’t we wait just a few more minutes for her Healer?”

“This is very serious. Her agitation proves something isn’t right—”

“No, she’s always agitated easily, it’s sort of a personality trait—” he was interrupted.

“For her health and the babies’ health they need to be delivered as soon as possible—”

A loud noise interrupted their tense conversation. Caden and the Healers turned, glancing back towards the door of the room. It had been pushed open so hard it slammed into the wall behind it. And standing in the doorway, miraculously, was Scorpius.

“Scorpius!!” Lily cried, relieved. “Oi! _He_ is my Healer, so you lot _get away from me_!”

Scorpius hurried over to the Healers standing beside Caden. Caden was a bit lost as they all began discussing medical things quickly and urgently. He returned to Lily’s side, trusting in Scorpius to be Lily’s advocate in the conversation. Lily looked like she was in extreme discomfort, but rather than voicing that, she was channeling all her energy into glowering at a Healer—one of the ones who’d kept touching her legs—who appeared to be glowering back. Caden set one hand on Lily’s hair to smooth it back, his other falling to rest on her belly. He lifted it right back up a second later.

“It feels weird,” he voiced, alarmed. He set his hand back against the fabric of her top. Her stomach felt taut like a drum and not at all like it’d felt even hours before. “Do you feel that?”

With her glaring eyes still pinned on the Healer she’d clearly developed a strong hatred for, Lily muttered: “I’m having contractions.”

Caden’s heart thumped strangely. “What?! How do you know?”

“Because I feel like setting myself on fire.”

“Er, Scorpius,” Caden quickly said, glancing over at their brother-in-law. “She says she’s having contractions.”

“We _said_ she probably was—”

Lily interrupted the Healer. “That’s enough from you, thanks.”

Scorpius’s hands flapped nervously at his side for a moment. He walked over and stood at Caden’s side. He leaned over and patted Lily’s shoulder nicely.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised gently. “I’ve got us an operating theatre. We _are_ going to do it now, but it’s going to be okay. Can I check on the babies first, to make sure they’re doing okay?”

Lily—who’d fought the other Healers every single step of the way—nodded without one bit of complaint or hesitation. Caden watched on nervously as the image of their babies formed in the air above Lily’s stomach. They looked like real babies now; there were no alien features to be found. Caden thought they looked just fine, but he looked nervously at Scorpius to be sure. When he spotted Scorpius’s relieved smile, he relaxed.

“Good. They’re hanging in there. If we wait much longer, we risk serious complications for both you _and_ the twins, so we’re going to go ahead and do it. Okay? You ready?” he directed the question at both of them. Caden faltered. He looked at Lily. She looked at him.

“I guess we’ve got to be,” Caden finally said.

Lily held Caden’s gaze. Her expression was surprisingly fierce and steady. “Let’s do it.”

Scorpius gave them another reassuring smile. “Okay! Let’s go! Happy birthday to Iris and Elliot, a day earlier than planned! Not too bad, really—some twins come _very, very_ early! But Lily, listen. I have to have other Healers in the room with me. I need help—it’s not a one-person job.”

Lily looked wary. “But _you’re_ doing the procedure? _You’re_ the one pulling the babies out?”

“Right. But I’ll need one or two Healers there just in case there are complications.”

Lily didn’t look too happy about it, but after a short pause, she nodded.

Caden had imagined what it might feel like walking to the delivery room many times, but he had been very far from the mark. Instead of feeling extreme excitement or nervousness, he felt strangely disconnected, like this was all still a dream. He felt like he could hardly wrap his mind around the strangeness of what was happening, and he didn’t know if that was because it had all happened so _quickly,_ or if it was because he had no frame of reference for how to handle any of this. He kept telling himself _‘you’re about to be a dad, the babies are about to be here in your arms, you’re about to be a dad’_ , but he found he could hardly process that overwhelming information. So instead, he focused on Lily. He stayed right at her side—and he was intending on staying there no matter what, unless she told him to fuck off—and he stroked her hair. He tried to block the rest of it out: the Healers’ conversations, the strange humming and beeping of the monitoring spells and devices, the anxious thudding of his own heart. He knew that she needed him, and if he was being honest, he really needed her, too. He couldn’t yet process the fact that the babies were nearly here, but he could process her. He could look at her and understand that the tight line of her lips was from pain, that the furrow of her brows was from concern, and he knew how to help that. That made sense to him. And that was where he was most useful; that was where things made sense.

He wasn’t even sure when they started the procedure because he wasn’t looking at anything but her face. And after her Numbing Draught, her face stopped showing any pain at all. She took his hand in a death grip and her eyes stayed locked on his. He knew she was probably afraid to look away from him, afraid to look down at her own body and see what was happening. He was so sucked into their gaze, into their own weird bubble inside this moment, that Scorpius had to physically tap his shoulder to get his attention.

“Caden, Lily,” Scorpius said, and the slightly frustrated volume of his tone told Caden he’d called them a few times already. Caden glanced around. There was a shimmery veil hovering in the air in front of Lily’s stomach, blocking their view from whatever was happening on the other side, and he was thankful for that.

As soon as Scorpius had their attention, he wasted no further time. “Lily, do you still want that second procedure done? You’re _sure_ you won’t want kids again soon? If I do it—and the spell has to be done now, while you’re still in surgery—you’ll have to wait at least ten years for it to begin to wear off. There’s no undoing it.”

Caden only had to think about the sight of her crumbling to the ground that morning. He didn’t want to ever go through this again. Thankfully, Lily felt the same way.

“Yes. I want you to do it. After they’re out of there, if they’re okay, I want you to do it.”

“Okay,” Scorpius nodded. He disappeared behind the shimmery veil. Lily shut her eyes and took a deep breath. Caden had no idea if she felt discomfort or pain, or if maybe her nerves had finally gotten to her. He lowered his forehead down and rested it against their clasped hands. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He could _feel_ Lily’s pulse—it was so rapid it was strong even in her _hand_. He opened his eyes and glanced back up at her to ask her if she was okay, but her hand tightened suddenly around his in a painful grip, and a second later, the sound of crying filled the room. Dazed, Caden automatically turned and glanced around, but that veil was still up. He felt his heart jump as Scorpius stepped around the veil, a bloody, squirming infant in his arms. He didn’t know who Scorpius was headed for—him or Lily—but he automatically reached out and stepped forward, an overwhelming feeling of _belonging_ washing over him. Like his arms were precisely where the baby was headed, where the baby belonged. Scorpius set the baby into his arms—gore and all—and returned back behind that veil a second later. Caden brought the screaming, bloody thing to his chest and could only process the utterly overpowering surge of protectiveness he felt; it was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He felt the warm blood coating her skin seeping through the fabric of his shirt, felt his eardrums ringing from the volume of his daughter’s shrieks, saw the furious furrow of her tiny brow, and was _certain_ of only one thing: he loved her.

Several short seconds later, with a cry Caden barely even heard, their son was placed in Lily’s arms. Her arms moved up to hold him of their own accord, automatic like Caden’s had been, not hesitant or uncertain in the slightest. She peered down into the shrieking infant’s face with an expression so tender and moving that Caden felt tears prick his eyes. And Lily—the girl who could withstand the Cruciatus without allowing tears to fall, the girl who could suffer through third-degree burns without so much as a tear—was crying over top of their newborn’s blood-slicked hair.

He felt like she needed to hold them both, needed to fully see and appreciate what all her misery had been for. He lowered Iris down onto her mother’s shirt, so she was lying right beside her brother, and watched as Lily’s smile grew. She wrapped both arms around the babies to hold them in place. She ducked her head and kissed their gory heads one at a time.

“They’re fucking beautiful,” Lily said tearfully. She had never sounded more proud. She appeared to swell from the emotion. And Caden, never quite as prideful as Lily, felt just the same. He had never seen anything so wonderful, so awe-inspiring, and they were _his_.

* * *

 

He felt like he could’ve happily rested in bed beside Lily holding the babies for _ages._ Their mother—the one who was meant to be lying down and recovering from having them—did not agree. She was up from her hospital bed ten minutes after her stomach was closed back up. 

“Lily,” Caden complained at once. He watched in disbelief as she pulled his jumper on over her hospital gown (he’d removed it shortly after the birth, the adrenaline coursing through him making him sweat and overheat in it). “What the hell are you doing?”

If it weren’t for the hospital gown, the messiness of her hair, and the paleness of her cheeks, he might never have known she’d just had twins. She stood tall and strong, and with the babies no longer inside of her and her uterus magically shrunk back down to size, her massive stomach was nowhere to be found. He glanced down at Elliot quickly as he made a sniffling sort of noise, and by the time he’d glanced back up, Lily was already putting shoes on.

“I want to show them off,” she said proudly. “Let’s walk down to the waiting area.”

“You’re not supposed to be walking around yet. They said you need to rest for the rest of the day,” he reminded her.

She crossed over to the bed and reached down. He opened his arm and smiled as she lifted Iris from his chest. She was clean now and bundled up in a soft blanket; there was something irresistibly beautiful in the way Lily held her and looked down at her little face.

Caden knew there was no stopping Lily—she’d been stuck in bed for _weeks_ and was finally free from her “deformed body”—but that wouldn’t stop him from worrying and nagging.

“You’re going to get in trouble if the Healers see you,” he reminded her.

“Getting in trouble is what I’m good at,” Lily shrugged. She was uncharacteristically sweet as she leaned in and kissed the bridge of Iris’s tiny nose. Caden felt his heart swell. He felt moved nearly to the point of tears at the sight of them, his girlfriend and their child, and he might’ve given into those tears…if she hadn’t turned to him expectantly a moment later, her other arm reaching out towards Iris’s twin.

“No!” he complained at once. He tightened his grip on their son. “No, I’m holding Elliot. You can’t hold both of them _and_ walk down to the reception area right after birthing twins! In fact, you probably shouldn’t be holding Iris, either. What if you faint?”

“I won’t faint,” she dismissed with a scoff. “I feel fine. I feel _great_ , better than I have in _ages_. And I want to hold our son.”

“But you’re already holding our daughter,” he reminded her. He looked down at their son. Iris was quite chill and had already fallen asleep a few times, but their son had been mostly alert and a bit fussy; he had only just settled down and Caden was certain that he didn’t want to disturb him. There was something so tender and special in the way it felt to have his infant son asleep in his arms. Selfishly, he didn’t want to give the moment up. “He’s comfortable here.”

Lily leaned over them. Her expression softened remarkably as she took in their little boy. “He does look quite cozy. Will you carry him down there, then? I just want people to see him. I want them to see them both.”

“But we’ve got _plenty_ of time to show them off,” he reminded Lily. He reached out and touched the back of her hand. “You need to give yourself time to recover.”

“I _am_ recovered. Look.” She shifted Iris over so she was cradled in one arm and lifted up her gown with her other. Caden could only _barely_ see the line on her abdomen where her skin had been parted to make room to pull the babies out. The line was a silvery white. She poked hard over it and didn’t even flinch. “I’m fine. See?”

He shook his head. “You’re impossible. Don’t you want to rest for _at least_ half an hour?”

“Twenty minutes was plenty.”

“That was _maybe_ ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes was plenty.”

Realizing she was _determined_ to show off their babies and take immediate advantage of her returned physical freedom, he held Elliot more securely and slid off the hospital bed.

“Okay, but if you start hemorrhaging, I’m going to say ‘I told you so’.”

“Even if I die?”

“Even if you die.”

Lily leaned over and peered down at Elliot. She kissed his hair lightly. “Daddy’s harsh, Elliot.”

He really would’ve liked a peaceful hour or so with the babies without everybody else around, but when he spotted the pride-filled beam on his girlfriend’s face as she walked into the reception area and held Iris up into the air proudly, he was glad they’d gone. Seeing her so radiant and smug made him happier than almost anything else (because part of him had been _very_ worried about how she’d take to motherhood emotionally.)

Everybody collapsed into cheers and _aww_ s—with a few people questioning Lily on why she was already up and roaming the hospital—and then they all surged forward towards the babies.

“Uh-uh!” Lily said at once. “Form an orderly queue! Don’t run over here like that, Merlin, they’re _fragile_. And be quiet! Elliot’s sleeping!”

Hugo made it over to Caden before Ginny could. He promptly leaned down and kissed Elliot right on the head. Caden was grinning.

“Glad you made it here in time, Hugh,” he said honestly, his heart full of love for his greatest friend.

Hugo didn’t respond. He appeared quite emotional. He seized Caden in a gentle hug, mindful of the baby between them.

“Oi!” Lily shouted from a few feet over. “Hugo, don’t squash my baby! I spent nearly nine _entire months_ on him!”

“I wasn’t! I’m being gentle!” Hugo defended himself. He stepped back and beamed down at Caden’s son. He stroked his light hair. “He’s _brilliant_.”

Caden couldn’t contain his pride. “I know. He’s fucking amazing.”

Hugo watched on with Caden as Elliot gave a tiny sigh in his sleep. His little brow furrowed slightly. Hugo looked like his head might explode for a moment, and then he blurted:

“Aster, I _want one_!”

“Oh, we’re _definitely_ having one of these,” Aster replied. “ _Definitely._ ” Caden glanced over at her; she was cradling Iris and she looked every bit as in love as Caden felt. After her second ‘definitely’, she winked quickly at Lily—so quickly that Hugo missed it, having glanced back down at Elliot—but Caden didn’t. Lily snickered briefly in response. He made a mental note to ask Lily about it later.

“Your mum and dad were the same way,” Ginny told Hugo, amused. “Hermione and Ron kept saying ‘oh, we’re waiting a couple years to have kids, we’re going to be at least thirty, we’re going to establish our careers and our lives first, yada-yada-yada’…and _then_ they held James at St. Mungo’s. So much for _that_ plan.”

Harry laughed along with Ginny. When it was their turn to hold the babies (and they’d been _remarkably_ patient), they all moved over to the sofas along the far wall. Caden passed Elliot to Harry while Lily handed Iris—a bit reluctantly—over to Ginny. He watched on as the grandparents fawned over them. It felt good knowing that his children would have grandparents who actually loved them. It felt _great_ knowing that his children would have parents who actually loved them. That was already two steps up from Caden’s own childhood.

“They’re…blond,” Ginny commented, surprised. She was studying the babies intently. She looked up and stared hard at Lily and Caden, as if double checking that one of them had blond hair. Caden guessed she wasn’t used to light-headed grandchildren; even Lyra had come out with redder hair than white. “Red usually beats blond, but look at them: they’re a bit golden!”

“What are you trying to say?” Lily demanded. She reached over and grabbed Caden’s shoulder, yanking him forward a bit so he was leaning in front of Ginny. “Their dad’s got golden hair, Mum! I fucking _told you all_  thatthey’re his! It’s insulting how many people clearly doubted that!”

“I didn’t _ever_ doubt that,” Ginny said, affronted. “It’s just an observation! It’s lovely. Do you think their hair will stay this shade?”

“No, we saw them in Gantha’s crystal ball. Their hair turns reddish, or at least it appeared that way in the sun,” Lily said. She leaned over her dad’s lap and brushed Elliot’s hair affectionately. “Though I do love their hair now. I’m fine with it staying just like this.”

Caden was quite attached to the idea of them having Lily’s hair, but he had to admit there was something special about seeing parts of himself reflected in them already.

“Okay, be honest, Mum and Dad,” Lily began. “James and Albus aren’t here right now. Tell the truth. My babies are the _cutest_ , right?”

“It’s not a competition, Lulu,” Harry sighed.

“But they are. Look at how perfect they are. Even their heads are so perfectly round. I did a _great_ job making them. Mine are the cutest.”

“All our grandchildren are cute,” Ginny said.

“But my babies are _beautiful_ ,” Lily said.

“All our grandchildren are beautiful,” Harry corrected.

Caden thought it was obvious that the twins were the cutest. He looked at them and felt his heart melt. He looked at them and couldn’t find one thing that wasn’t perfectly adorable. But then again, he was probably biologically programmed to feel that way.

“But mine are _extra_ beautiful,” Lily persisted stubbornly.

“Well, you can’t give yourself all the credit if you really feel that way, Lu,” Ginny pointed out. “Because Lyra’s technically from your genes, too.”

Lily dismissed that with a careless wave of her hand. “Yeah, but she’s not mine and Caden’s. I’ll be the one to say it: we’re _the_ superior combination.”

Caden leaned in. “So what she’s saying is that my genes make all the difference.”

“Pretty much,” Ginny agreed.

Lily backhanded his shoulder without even glancing his way. He grinned.

“They _are_ beautiful, there is no denying that,” Ginny said, her voice brimming with love.

Caden couldn’t stop smiling.

* * *

 

Albus and Lyra came to visit later that day. Albus had been watching Lyra at Lily and Caden’s house, waiting until things had calmed down enough to bring Lyra by. Caden had anticipated Lyra’s meeting with the twins to be adorable, but when Albus held Lyra in his lap and turned her to face the twins, she didn’t seem to even notice their presence. She drooled a puddle onto Albus’s hand, hiccupped a few times, and then looked up at Albus, entirely indifferent to the newborns being held up in front of her.

“That was anti-climactic,” Scorpius whispered loudly to Albus. Albus leaned over and kissed the edge of Lyra’s little mouth; she gave a big smile.

Scorpius smiled at Lyra. “You don’t know it yet, pumpkin, but you are going to be _best friends_ with these babies!”

“Maybe,” Albus amended.

“They _will_ ,” Scorpius said firmly. He pulled Lyra from Albus’s arms and kissed her chubby cheeks. She cooed happily. “You will _love_ your cousins, Lyra!”

Right now, the only thing Lyra seemed to love was gnawing on Scorpius’s hand. She flopped forward in his arms and chewed on his knuckle like a little shark. Caden laughed.

Lily had been leaning forward, both the twins held out to let Lyra inspect them, but she straightened once she realized Lyra didn’t really care.

“That’s fair,” Lily told Lyra. “I felt the same way about babies ‘til this morning.”

The rest of their first day with their babies was filled with visitor after visitor. Dragonologists, dragon keepers, and Ministry workers filed in and out as news of the twins’ arrival spread through their interwoven social circles. Their respective work friends brought flowers and chocolates and congratulations; those within the Auror department that’d had no idea that Caden was even dating Lily, much less having babies with her, gradually got over their shock, and Caden felt confident that he _wouldn’t_ be fired for conflict of interest (there was really no one else left who was willing to negotiate with Lily, after all.) Mia gave the babies blankets embroidered with dragons. Harry and Ginny brought dinner, they ate and laughed with Albus, Scorpius, Aster, Hugo, Harry, and Ginny while the babies snoozed in their cots, and then Caden and Lily found themselves alone for the first time since they’d become parents. Lily had to stay the night at the hospital, but she’d be free to go come morning, and then they could go home. Caden couldn’t wait.

“I thought I’d be nervous,” he shared, “about bringing them home. But I’m excited.”

 Lily collapsed back against the pillows. “I can’t wait to sleep in our bed.”

“I can’t wait to be _home_ ,” he agreed. He leaned over the bedside cot and checked in on the twins. They were sleeping close together, their little backs rising and falling in perfect synchronization. They’d eaten remarkably well for their first day on the planet and were now snoozing deeper than Caden had seen yet. He hoped it was a good omen for what was to come. “Do you think they’ll be this easy to handle tomorrow?”

“Fuck no,” Lily yawned. “I think they’re probably going to be little nightmares. We probably won’t sleep much. But they’re worth it.”

She still sounded so proud and confident. It infused Caden’s mood with surety. “They are. And we’ve got your parents’ help for a couple weeks more. I’m sure Elliot and Iris will keep us all busy.”

“Mmhmm. They’re not fooling me. They might seem precious and innocent now, but they’re _ours_.”

* * *

 

The twins certainly _did_ keep them busy. The next few weeks were a strange, never-ending cycle of bottle-warming, nappy-changing, baby-washing, and short cat naps—even with the two extra set of hands. Caden couldn’t remember ever being so busy. But he also couldn’t remember ever feeling so complete. Harry and Ginny kept Big Boy in the guest house and helped take care of him while Caden and Lily focused on the twins. The Potters took over whenever they needed a real break, but for the most part, it was going better than Caden could’ve hoped. Lily required at least one short break from the house to remain sane (they’d learned that the hard way the first week), but she handled the babies’ fussy nights better than almost anyone else. She usually ran to the sanctuary around lunch, visited the dragons, did whatever urgently needed to be done, and returned by the afternoon. She wasn’t too good at handling nappy explosions, but she was remarkably great at handling the “night shifts”. Caden guessed it made sense; she was used to long, demanding hours at the sanctuary. On those long, fussy nights, he often found her sitting outside in the garden with the babies, chatting on the muggle phone to her friends back in England who were already up for the day while she rocked the twins.

When it all got a bit overwhelming—when he caught that panicky, caged look in Lily’s eyes that he’d seen so often near the end of her pregnancy—he bundled the babies up, put them in the pram, and they took a short hike to the beach just a little ways from their house. Fresh air made all the difference for both of them. It helped to remember that their lives would eventually go back to normal, that their children wouldn’t be impossibly fragile, needy infants forever.

But for the most part, he was enjoying fatherhood wholeheartedly with an enthusiasm he hadn’t anticipated. He cherished the time he had with his babies; he _loved_ returning home to his babies and his girlfriend after a quick run to the market or his office. Especially his girlfriend. He had loved her before, had loved her for a very long time, but he felt like he only grew to love her more as each day passed. There was something so lovely and breathtaking about the sight of her cradling their babies, their little heads resting in the crooks of her flower-adorned arms. The sight of her smile first thing in the morning when the babies woke, her sweet-sounding laughter any time the babies did something funny or cute (which was often.) He had always been able to see and appreciate the softer side of Lily Potter. He had always found the duality of her softness and strength irresistibly interesting and magnetic. But their babies brought out that side of her in a way nothing else ever had—not even baby dragons. The babies had highlighted one of the things Caden had always loved most about her, and it only served to make him that much more attracted to her and that much more in love with her. He was certain that she knew it, too. And going by the looks he caught her giving him when he was singing to the babies or rocking them to sleep, he thought she probably felt the same way about him, too.

To be fair, he had _always_ been painfully attracted to her, so to suddenly find himself even _more_ drawn to her was incredibly distracting. Their looks lingered longer and longer as the days passed. Their stolen moments against kitchen cupboards multiplied. The sexual tension—fueled by repression from over two months of forced abstinence, more love than either realistically knew what to do with, and—on Lily’s part—raging hormones—mounted day after day, until finally, Lily’s parents addressed it.

“Okay,” Ginny said firmly. She set her cup down on the kitchen table firmly. Caden and Lily had been sharing a long, lingering look, their feet intertwined beneath the kitchen table and Caden’s mind rushing with a thousand different inappropriate thoughts, but at that, he quickly looked over at Ginny. “Harry and I are taking the twins for the night.”

Caden halfway expected Lily to argue. They had been rather stubborn on that front so far. They had both felt like they really needed to get a handle on carrying for the twins on their own before they’d let the Potters take over, lest they grew to rely on their nighttime help too much and found themselves incapable when the time came for them to return to England. But Caden wasn’t about to argue, and when he looked at Lily’s slightly flushed cheeks, he knew she wasn’t, either. They’d had around six entire weeks of carrying for the twins without much of any nighttime help; that was as good a start as they were going to get. If they didn’t have a handle on it by now, they never would. Or maybe that was the sexual frustration speaking.

“Okay,” she said. “If you’re sure.”

“We’re sure. You two are getting a bit nauseating. Get it out of your systems and meet us in the morning.”

“Gin, _ugh_ ,” Harry complained.

“What? They need it. We were them once.”

“Ew,” Lily muttered under her breath. Only Caden heard it.

Harry and Ginny glanced at him like they halfway expected him to protest, but he wasn’t about to. He needed a night alone with Lily more than he could verbalize. Lily’s parents took the twins while Caden and Lily carried the travel cots over to the guest house. They returned to their home, shut the door behind them, and promptly went to shove each other against the wall. Their power struggle resulted in Caden knocking his shoulder against the coat stand and Lily stubbing her toe against the door frame.

“Don’t you even _dare_ ,” Lily growled. “ _I_ get to run this tonight; _I’m_ the one who just spent _months_ deformed and miserable and unable to fuck.”

He knew she was right so he fairly relented. She shoved him back against the wall so hard his shoulder blades ached. Her kiss was hot and stinging, her hands firm and demanding, and he had never been so turned on. She had never been so enticing or gorgeous.

“Motherhood looks fucking great on you,” he told her, his voice low and serious.

Her eyes danced with laughter. “You’re a smooth motherfucker.”

“Too right I am.”

“Prove it.”

“With pleasure.”

 _Now_ everything _really_ felt like it was getting back to normal.

* * *

 

They slept for a long, blissful while afterwards, and around dawn, they crept over to the guest house to bring their children back home.

“You two could’ve slept in,” Ginny yawned when they roused her to let her know they were taking the twins back over to their house.

“We’re well-rested,” Lily dismissed. The truth was that the house seemed odd without their babies.

They had breakfast, fed the babies, and then collapsed back on the bed. They settled Iris and Elliot on the covers between them. Caden kissed the back of Iris’s tiny hand and smiled at his children. If he had ever felt more content, he couldn’t remember.

“I don’t really know what I was so worried about before,” Lily told him quietly. Elliot’s hand was wrapped around her thumb and she was gently rubbing his fingers with her knuckle, her eyes full of powerful love. “This feels normal, like this was always how our life together was. And I like them _so much better_ now that they’re out here rather than inside of me. They were a bit awful when they were in reach of my organs and ribs.”

Caden smiled. “Yeah, I like them much better now that they’re out here, too.”

The four of them lightly snoozed for a few more minutes. Caden was debating whether or not to get up to start making lunch when he heard a knock echo down the corridor from the front hall. Ginny and Harry wouldn’t have knocked, which meant it was probably work-related. Lily sighed and turned over onto her back, but Caden reached out and set a hand on her hip, stilling her.

“Nah, I’ll get it. It’s probably Aurors.”

Lily scowled. “And let you go greet Wendy all alone in your pajamas? I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t say it was Wendy. It could be _any_ Auror,” he reminded her.

“Which means it _could_ be Wendy.”

“There’s really no need to feel threatened by Wendy,” Caden reminded her dryly.

She scoffed. “I’m not threatened. I just want to be there to threaten _her_ if she makes eyes at you. And I want to rub our babies in her _face_.”

Wendy—one of the Aurors assigned to the dragon poaching division within the New Zealand Ministry, the Auror that had a blatant crush on Caden, the Auror that Lily had long hated—hadn’t been invited to the hospital to visit after the news spread that Caden had become a father, so Caden didn’t even know if she _knew_ he and Lily were together. It would certainly come as a shock for her to find them living together with newborn twins. But there was no way he was going to hold Lily back from boasting.

He scooped Iris up into his arms and waited as Lily did the same with Elliot. They carried their sleepy babies to the door, where the visitor was still knocking rather impatiently. Caden was bracing himself for a catfight between Wendy and Lily as he unlocked the door with a wave of his wand and pulled it open. But it was not an Auror. The presence of the people on the other side was so unexpected and unwanted that it felt like a slap to the face. It seemed to take his mind a second to process it. It didn’t take Lily that long.

“ _You_ ,” she said darkly, and without another word, she reached out and slammed the door back in Caden’s grandparents’ faces. “Fucking twats.”

“I…” Caden was still staring at the door in confusion. How had they known where he was? How did they get here? Why were they here? His questions raced through his mind, and as they did, he realized that he and Lily were holding their _children_. His grandparents had seen them. His grandparents knew they existed. _What if they’re the reason they are here?_

“Caden,” his grandmother called through the closed door. Her voice was as firm and severe as always. “We want to speak with you.”

Lily angrily swung her hair over her shoulder and pointed accusingly at the closed door. “I told you two long ago that I didn’t want to see you _ever again_ while you’re still breathing! So unless you plan on offing yourselves right now, get the fuck off our doorstep! You can’t just come here! This is _our_ property!”

“Hush, you idiot girl,” Caden’s grandfather said coldly. Caden bristled. “We’re speaking with our grandson.”

“Oh ho! You think you are, do you?!” Lily clutched Iris securely to her chest with her right arm and then reached out with her left to fumble with the doorknob. She’d wrenched the door open before Caden could say a word. She clenched her fist threateningly. “How about you speak to my fists, you wrinkly piece of dragon dung! Get _off_ my property! Big Boy! BIG BOY!”

 _Uh oh._ Caden automatically turned and peered over his grandparents’ heads towards the guest house Lily’s parents and Big Boy were staying in. At Lily’s call, Big Boy came barreling out of the guest house. He stopped dead in his tracks halfway down the path leading up to their house, his wide, multicolored eyes on the strangers. A rumbling began at the back of his throat.

“Oh, fuck,” Caden said softly. He’d only barely managed to yank Lily out of the way as the back of Big Boy’s throat glowed red. Moments later, flames burst free from his mouth and raced towards the “intruders”. Had they not built this entire house to be flame-resistant, the entire thing would’ve surely caught flame. Elliot and Iris began shrieking.

His grandparents had somehow ducked in time, though Big Boy’s less-than-warm welcome had alarmed them enough to make them retreat forward a few steps. Big Boy bounded up towards the house; he circled around Caden’s grandparents and planted himself right in front of Caden and Lily, a soft snarling unfurling from his mouth.

“You should go,” Caden told his grandparents. He shifted Iris over so her little head was cradled to his shoulder. He rubbed her back gently to help calm her down. “You were not invited.”

“Caden,” his grandmother cried. She didn’t look away from Big Boy for even a moment. “You stop this right now! We demand that you show us respect! We came to speak with you! When we saw the article about the babies, we had to come—”

“Article?” Caden interrupted sharply. He held up a hand as Big Boy began to growl again, momentarily stilling the dragon’s aggressions. “What article?”

His grandfather’s eyes flashed to Lily. “The article about her. And I see now that it’s true. They’re yours? You’re sure?” He sounded rudely skeptical.

Lily held Elliot more securely. “Burn them, Big Boy,” she muttered darkly.

Caden quickly held up a stilling hand again, stopping Big Boy just in time. The dragon looked between Lily and Caden in confusion as if unsure who to listen to.

“I didn’t know there was an article,” Caden said. He felt sick. How had the press found out about the babies already? How had his grandparents found them _here?_ Why did they even care? “This has nothing to do with you two so you might as well go home.”

“It does so,” his grandmother insisted. “You’re a Rowle.” Her eyes drifted to Iris. “The babies are, too.”

“Yeah, well, I was never Rowle enough. Not for you two. And I believe I made it very clear last time we saw each other that I never would be. I suggest you leave and go back home before my girlfriend decides to let the gates down between our property and the sanctuary. I don’t think you’d like meeting dozens of full-sized, angry dragons.”

“I don’t know where we went wrong with you, but—”

“Keep talking,” Lily interrupted them angrily. “Keep giving me reasons to turn my dragons loose on you.”

“—but these babies…they’re a new start. Tell me you understand that. We got your address from Delphi and we had to come see you. We had to tell you that it’s not too late. You’re older now; you understand the world better, surely now you see that we were right, you understand why we did the things that we did.”

Caden wasn’t sure who made the next soft, growling noise: Big Boy or Lily. But both seemed ready to spring on the elderly couple at a moment’s notice. And as the full intention of their visit washed over Caden, he felt a similar rage.

“These babies don’t belong to you two in any way,” he told them clearly. “Let me repeat myself so I am certain that you understand: these babies do not belong to you in any way. You have no claim to them. They will not know you. You will not see them. Please tell me that you understand _that._ ”

They exchanged an affronted look.

“We’re they’re great-grandparents!”

“No. You’re not.”

“We are! How can you deny that when you know you’re our grandson?”

“Because I won’t ever tell them about you. And you won’t ever truly meet. So in their reality, they don’t have great-grandparents. I won’t let you try to poison their minds like you did with mine.”

“The only one poisoning your mind is her,” his grandfather bit, his eyes on Lily. He turned back to Caden. “You’ll regret this. If you send us away, you’ll regret it. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year. But when we’re dead, you’ll regret it.”

Caden shrugged. “Maybe,” he said calmly. “I’ll just have to wait and see, won’t I? Oddly, I’m not worried. Sorry that you came all this way. Don’t make the trip again.”

He thought he might’ve seen a shadow of sorrow pass over his grandmother’s eyes, but it was so foreign and quick that he wasn’t sure.

“Caden…” she began, but she seemed unsure of what to say after that.

“You were horrible guardians to me. I won’t ever forget it, even if I one day forgive it. I can’t permit you to ever be around my children. They won’t have a life like I did. I’m sorry that you came all this way, but I’m not sorry that I’m sending you away. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about them.”

And that was something his grandparents could never hope to understand because it had never been about the children in their care. It had always been about them and their beliefs and their status within the discriminatory, pureblood societal circles. It had never been about him.

When they still failed to budge, Lily waved at them. “Bye. Go on, leave. And fuck you for how you treated my boyfriend.”

His grandfather narrowed his eyes. “You nasty, foul-mouthed little—”

Caden had kept a hand in front of Big Boy’s face—a sign that meant ‘don’t be aggressive’—but at that, his fingers automatically curled up. As soon as that nonverbal signal was gone, Big Boy let out a spine-tingling shriek. Caden’s grandparents turned and fled down the front walk, Big Boy barreling after them as fast as his fat little legs would carry him. Caden watched them until they disappeared, his eyes hot and his stomach sick.

“Why would Delphi tell them where we were?” he asked. It was bothering him more than the realization that the press had found out about the twins.

“She’s a bitch?” Lily suggested. “I keep telling you she can’t be trusted.”

But it didn’t make sense to him. Delphi had hated his grandparents just as much as he had hated Euphemia. They had bonded over that mutual hatred his entire childhood. Why would she have sent them here? He couldn’t remember a time that his grandparents had _ever_ put themselves out on his behalf, and because of that, part of him felt like he should have invited them in and listened. And part of him felt weak for even feeling that way.

* * *

 

The unexpected and unwanted visit had thoroughly ruined his day. It reminded him of something he’d been able to forget inside the blissful bubble of his new family: a world outside of this existed. A world where there were dangerous people, where his surname held its own unique challenges and risks, a world where his girlfriend’s life was often regarded by the public as a stage. It was enough to convince him to _never_ let the twins leave the sanctuary property. But that was no way to live, either.

“I’m going to ring Nora and find out what they printed about us,” Lily told him. She was reclined on the sofa with Elliot asleep on her chest, his little cheek pressed over her heart. She tapped numbers on the screen of her pocket phone angrily. “And then I’m going to make Delphi cry. That’s the last time we _ever_ owl her a photo of our babies. She can’t keep her mouth shut to save her life.”

“Don’t yell at her. Let me handle it,” he requested. “I’m sure she had a good reason.”

It seemed to physically pain Lily to let him handle Delphi. After they figured out what article his grandparents had been talking about— _Witch Weekly_ ran an article about them having a baby but hadn’t managed to get their hands on any photos or genuine credible sources, so it read more like speculation than anything—Lily yelled out suggestion after suggestion on things Caden should add into his letter to Delphi. He didn’t add any of them in, choosing instead to inquire why she had done what she’d done and make it _very_ clear that he was upset and uncomfortable with her giving his address out to _anyone._

He ended his letter quickly, eager to send it off so he could pick Iris back up again. She had been lying contentedly in the travel cot by the sofa while he wrote the letter, but she was starting to take offense to the fact that Elliot was still being held and she wasn’t, and she was making fussier and fussier sounds every few seconds. A tantrum was incoming.

“Were you mean enough? Let me see it before you send it,” Lily requested.

“No. I just asked her why she told them.” He rolled the letter up and called for their owl.

Lily groaned. “You should at least yell at her! She _knows_ how you feel about those people and she just led them right to us without even asking you!”

The owl swooped in through the opened window but refused to let Caden tie the letter on. She flew up on top of the mantel instead and picked moodily at her snack dish. She was a bit of a primadonna.

“Maybe she had a good reason to tell them. Maybe she didn’t mean to. I don’t know. But I’m not going to yell at her before I even know why.”

“ _Ughhhh_ ,” Lily groaned. She flopped her head back against the couch cushions. “Your dad’s annoying, Elliot.”

Elliot made a tiny gurgling sound back at Lily. Caden couldn’t help but smile, and when he glanced at Lily, she was grinning, too.

“At least tell her that I hate her now,” Lily requested. She paused. “Well, I hate her _more_ than I already did, anyway.”

“Fine, okay,” Caden allowed. He unrolled his parchment, dipped the quill back in ink, and added: _Lily says hello_.

By the time Caden glanced back over at Lily, she’d pulled Iris from the travel cot beside the sofa. She had both babies in her arms now, though they were growing so quickly that both of them lying on her chest was getting to be quite the squeeze. She leaned in and cooed sweetly at them, her arms holding them securely in place. Both babies smiled predictably. Their first real smiles had happened recently—and within a day of each other—and Caden and Lily were quite obsessed with them. They had a bit of a competition going over who could make the twins smile more each day.

“There. I added it,” Caden lied.

“And tell her that she can’t _ever_ see our babies now. And she’s really missing out. Because they’re fucking _adorable_. Isn’t that right, Iris? Isn’t that right, Elliot? You two are fucking _adorable_! _Fuck-ing a-dor-a-ble_.”

More gurgling noises and smiles. Caden was grinning as he obediently turned back to the letter and added: _Lily says hello to Evangeline, too, and wishes her well._

“Okay, told her.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “If I check that letter, will it say what I asked, or will you have written polite things?”

Caden ignored her question. He changed the subject. “I think Elliot needs a nappy change.”

“You’re the _worst_ ,” Lily complained.

“Me or Elliot?”

“You. Wait—” she lifted Elliot and sniffed him to see if he really needed a change. She gagged. “No. Nevermind. Elliot is the worst.”

He _finally_ got their owl to cooperate, tied the letter on, and then walked over. He took Elliot from Lily.

“I’ll do it,” he offered. He kissed his son’s head and carried him over towards the changing table.

“Is this your peace offering for lying to me? Because it’s working. You can change _all_ the nasty nappies for the next year.”

“Nice try.”

* * *

 

They didn’t receive a reply from Delphi by bedtime, but as they settled the twins to bed, Caden felt certain he already knew why Delphi had done it.

Her talk of revenge had slowly morphed into talk of redemption over the years, no doubt a side-effect of spending time with the Malfoys. And for somebody with nearly no family at all, the idea of families coming back together and making peace must’ve seen nice. She had done it once, after all. She’d been forgiven by Draco and Scorpius—her only living blood relatives—like she probably hoped Caden would forgive his grandparents. She had gained family where once she’d only had bitter memories.

And it was a nice idea. But he couldn’t do it.

Maybe his grandparents were sorry about the way they’d treated him. Maybe they were sorry about the people they’d been, about the person their son had been, about the man they’d tried to turn Caden into. Maybe they were different now. But it was just as likely—if not more likely—that they were the same as they’d always been. And he couldn’t subject his children to their influence. He couldn’t risk them falling for the poisonous ideas his grandparents whispered in children’s ears; he couldn’t risk them taking after any Rowle but himself.

“Was it strange?” Lily wanted to know. She held his arms to her chest. He tucked his body around hers and held her close. “To see them again?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He paused. The urge to be honest with her was too strong to ignore. “But it was harder to look at them and realize that their blood is in our children’s veins, too.” He pressed his face into her hair. His fingers dipped inside her dressing gown and traced the slight ridge of her abdomen scar. “I am afraid of what I passed down to them.”

What if the things that he had managed to avoid—the violence, the cruelty, the hatred—were avoided less by will and more by sheer luck? What if they were traits that he’d just missed out on, traits that could have skipped over him and ended up taking root inside their children? What then?

It was a horrifying thought to Caden. But Lily didn’t seem concerned.

“I’m not afraid of that.”

He still felt worried. “They’ve got as much a chance of taking after your parents as mine.”

“No, they don’t. Because your parents are dead, and they’re never coming back, and they’re never going to talk to our babies. And my parents are in the guest house.”

He understood what she was getting at. And in that moment, it comforted him.

“They’re going to be a lot of things,” Lily told him. “And if what we’ve seen of them so far is in any way accurate, they’ll probably be loud, bossy, and stinky. But they won’t be evil. You don’t pass evil down like eye color, Caden.”

“I hope not.”

“You worry about all the wrong things.”

“What _should_ I be worrying about, then?”

“The escalating global muggle violence. The resurgence of spattergroit. Who will do the laundry and cook dinner when my mum and dad go back to England. That sort of stuff.”

“I see.”

She ducked her head and kissed his arm. “They’re lovely and they’re _ours_. Not your parents’. Not your grandparents’. _Ours_. They’re made from you and from me, and we’re unique from anybody else in the world, and they are, too. They won’t be like anybody else because there is nobody else like them.”

“So if they grow up and they’re awful—”

“It won’t be your fault. Honestly, Caden, if they grow up mean and awful, _who_ do you think will be blamed? You or me?”

He had to laugh. Thankfully, she laughed along with him.

“Oh, hush. You’re _not_ awful,” he mumbled. He swept her hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck. She sounded serious when she spoke next.

“And you’re not, either. You have never been and you never could’ve been.”

If there was one thing that he was _certain_ of, it was that he didn’t want his children growing up in fear of his family’s legacy like he had. So he vowed right then and there to lay it to rest. They might’ve been Rowles, but they were also Potters, and in his mind, that made them very extraordinary yet.


	17. III. Incubation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lime pox has nearly seen its end, but the consequences of it just keep building. Lyra finds herself in the headmaster's office. Albus wrestles with his demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This quick update can be attributed to Hurricane Irma. She wasn't nice, but the days off work certainly were. Hope everybody stayed safe!

“Okay, let’s hear from the Poaching Division. Potter? How are things coming along?”

Albus jumped slightly at the sound of his name. He hastily shoved the letter he’d been reading all the way beneath the table.

“Hi, right,” he said quickly. He pushed the letter down into his briefcase and then stood. He cleared his throat and looked around the massive conference room; nearly every set of important eyes were on him. “Er, things are going well. There are only two Aurors actively responding to calls at this point; there hasn’t been a real case in months. We had a few reports of illegal dragon breeding up north last week, but it turned out to be a big misunderstanding with a particularly disfigured horse. We saw a brief spike in activity last year after the dragon vaccine trials officially began for humans—I guess poachers got a bit plucky and thought they could go back to poaching with no consequences—but that has more or less died down. We _have_ seen a change in the audience of poached scales. The general public attitude has turned sharply against poached products, but—but the…the, er, the…”

A light grey owl had swooped into the cavernous room through the open skylights. Albus felt the back of his neck heat up. _Don’t come over here, don’t come over here…not now…_

“Er, so, as I was saying...the public has mostly turned against poached products…it’s seen as extremely inappropriate to wear them in public…” the owl was headed right for him. _Shit._ “But the more, er, _dodgy_ crowd has sort of adopted dragon scales as a sort of…rebellious style and we’ve seen a marked increase in—er…” the owl swooped low, circled the heads of the people closest to Albus, and then landed right in front of him. Its dirty talons pressed into the parchment of Albus’s meeting notes. The owl hooted impatiently and shook its leg out; the attached letter dangled tauntingly.

“Is there another important meeting you’re meant to be at?” Young asked lightly. Polite laughter traveled down the long table. Albus’s cheeks flushed.

“No, no, of course not, sorry, I…er…I’ll just grab this and read it later, sorry, anyway, as I was saying…we’ve noticed that a lot of new gangs have adopted particular types of scales as their preferred dress and use those to identify each other—”

Albus broke off abruptly. As he’d been talking, his eyes had drifted down to the letter. He had thought it was another letter from his husband, but instead of his wild, looping print, he saw the precise lettering of his father-in-law. Albus faltered.

“So they…they’ve created a bit more demand for…sorry. I’m sorry. I need to read this. It’s from my father-in-law. He doesn’t usually write during the day unless something is wrong.”

James stood up at the head of the table.

“We can move right on along while you deal with that and then circle back around later. No problem. My department can go next. Is that okay, Aunt Hermione?”

Albus glanced over at his aunt. She nodded reassuringly at Albus when they locked eyes and then motioned for James to continue. Albus shot his brother a grateful look, grabbed the letter, and then hurried from the hall.

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but this month in my department has been _ace_. Our prenatal parenting classes reached ninety percent turnout this month! _Ninety percent_! Our caseload has dropped by seven percent since February—and I _know_ that doesn’t seem like a lot, but anyone in my department can tell you that it is a dramatic reduction—”

James’s voice dimmed as Albus stepped out of the meeting. He shut the door quietly behind himself and then quickly tore open Draco’s letter. Draco _refused_ to own or even use a muggle pocket phone, even though they’d become quite popular within the Potter and Weasley families, so he typically communicated throughout the day via Floo or letters. Albus wouldn’t have been able to be reached via Floo since he’d been stuck downstairs in this sodding meeting for the past two hours, and for Draco to have sent a letter right afterwards rather than waiting meant it was something important, which meant it was almost certainly about Lyra. Albus unfolded the letter at once.

_Albus,_

_Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I am on my way to Lyra’s school. They attempted to reach you, but you were not in your office, and Scorpius has been in surgery for the past hour and cannot be reached, either. She is okay, but I believe she’s gotten herself into some trouble. I don’t mind going, of course, so don’t trouble yourself with rushing from work._

_Best,  
Draco_

Albus threw his head back and groaned in frustration. It would figure that he’d be unreachable the one time the school tried to contact him. They would surely think that he and Scorpius were awful parents now. And _what_ could Albus’s _Lyra_ be in trouble for? She could get a bit cheeky, sure, but she was a clever angel, and Albus couldn’t envision any situation where _Lyra_ would be in genuine trouble…

Troubled, he folded the letter back up and took a moment to think. Leaving the meeting early would certainly come back to haunt him. He wasn’t exactly Young’s favorite employee. Albus had taken two years off after Lyra’s birth to stay at home with her, and then once she’d turned three and they’d enrolled her at one of the premiere magical preschools, he’d started back part-time on desk duty. He’d gradually worked his way back up to full-time once Lyra started ‘real school’ this year, but he refused to go off desk-duty. Young seemed to feel like Harry Potter’s son was wasting away his potential behind a desk synthesizing poaching data, but Albus didn’t care. He wasn’t taking _any_ risks with his own life. He had a family to take care of.

He only had to think about Lyra’s charming little smile once and he made up his mind. Figuring it’d be ruder to disrupt the meeting to tell his aunt that he was leaving, he opted instead to leave and ask for forgiveness later rather than permission now. He made his way to the atrium, apparated directly to Malfoy Manor, and then called for Draco. After searching three main rooms and coming up empty, he deduced that Draco had already headed to the magical primary school. Albus turned on the spot and reappeared at the apparition point just outside the school’s front gates. The school’s symbol—a badger, lion, snake, and eagle together inside a cartoonish sun—greeted him on the iron gates. He pressed his wand into the censor just below the crest, waited for a second, and then stepped through the gates once they opened for him.

He didn’t have to search far, thankfully. He stepped into the glimmering main corridor, took the first left to the headmaster’s wing, and then spotted Draco’s white hair.

“Draco,” he called. Draco turned and glanced over his shoulder. Albus waved once and then sank into the seat beside his father-in-law. “What’s going on? Sorry it took me so long, they had me in this horrifically long and boring meeting.”

Draco set a hand on Albus’s shoulder in greeting. “It’s fine, I don’t mind. I was thinking about collecting Lyra early and taking her shopping anyway. Apparently, she’s been ‘defiant’ today, to the point that her teacher sent her to the headmaster.”

Albus’s jaw dropped. “She’s…sorry, _what_? Defiant? _Lyra_? Defiant like…that’s the word that means rude, right?” Where was Scorpius when Albus needed him? He was like a walking, talking thesaurus.

“Rude, disobedient, disrespectful…pick your adjective,” Draco said.

Albus was genuinely speechless. “But Lyra is a good girl. She never gets in trouble in school. Well, she had that phase when she started at the preschool, but she was so little and she wasn’t used to being away from me. She learnt very quickly.”

Draco shook his head. “They didn’t tell me much else. I have no idea what could have happened, but I suppose we’re going to find out.”

Albus had already come up with nearly a dozen different scenarios for what could have happened by the time the headmaster’s office door opened. He rose, expecting the headmaster to walk out a greet them, but instead, his daughter popped her head out. Her green eyes swept over the reception area, and when they fell on Albus, she beamed.

“Daddy!!” she cheered. “And _Grandfather_!!”

If Lyra knew she was in trouble, it didn’t show. She didn’t seem concerned or upset at all. She bounced over to Albus and Draco, a huge grin in place like nothing so wonderful had _ever_ happened to her at school. She threw her arms around Albus and he _knew_ he should’ve been stern, but he _had to_ lift her up and spin her around in a hug. He _had to_. He hugged her close and kissed her soft hair. Lyra was giggling as Albus set her back on the floor. She bombarded Draco with the same caliber of love and excitement that she’d greeted Albus with. Draco seemed similarly unable to remain stern.

“Right this way, Mr. Malfoy…oh, I see you made it, Mr. Potter-Malfoy. Wonderful, wonderful…strep right this way…”

Albus’s grin gradually fell. He glanced down at Lyra at the same time she glanced quickly up at him. Her smile had fallen, too, as if she’d only just remembered that she was in trouble, and her green eyes were wide with worry. She pulled nervously at the hem of her shirt as they followed the headmaster into his office.

“Take a seat wherever you like,” the headmaster greeted.

Albus followed Lyra over to a plush cream-colored sofa. She sank down on it and nervously gripped her little knees. Albus sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders comfortingly. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and felt his heart melt as she automatically leaned into his touch.

While Albus comforted his little delinquent, Draco had walked over to shake the headmaster’s hand, and it wasn’t until Albus saw that that it occurred to him that maybe that was the polite thing to do. The headmaster probably thought he was where Lyra got her alleged newfound rudeness from.

“It’s great to see you both,” the headmaster said to Draco and Albus. “Thank you for coming. I thought it pertinent to bring you in now so we can get a handle on Lyra’s behavior before it escalates.”

Draco inclined his head politely in agreement. Albus did not agree.

“What behavior?” he asked bluntly.

Lyra tugged suddenly on his cloak sleeve.

“Daddy,” she stage-whispered. “Daddy, is Papa coming, too?”

“No, pumpkin, he’s working,” Albus explained. He turned back to the headmaster expectantly.

“Lyra was being uncharacteristically defiant all morning. Her teacher said she repeatedly argued with him, refused to follow directions, and called him a…” the headmaster dropped his eyes to a piece of parchment on the desk. He read off of it as he continued. “A ‘lying animal-hater with dung breath’.”

“ _Lyra_ ,” Draco said sharply. Lyra looked at Draco with such a wounded expression that someone might think he’d slapped her. Albus, on the other hand, was struggling not to laugh.

“Oh. I see,” Albus managed, only _just_ concealing his inappropriate laughter. _It’s not funny, it’s bad. It’s not funny, it’s bad…_ “Er…Lyra, is this true?”

Lyra was certainly not a liar. “Yes.”

“You called your teacher that?”

“Yes.”

“You refused to listen to him?”

“Yes.”

“ _Why_?” Albus demanded.

Lyra squirmed on the sofa. She picked at a run in her tights and refused to meet Albus’s eyes. “Because I don’t like him.”

Albus shook his head in confusion. “Yes, you do, Lyra. You just said you loved him last week.”

Lyra bowed her head and mumbled: “Yeah _but_ that was _before_ he lied all the time.”

Albus leaned in closer. He lowered his voice, too. “Lied about _what_?”

Lyra looked up at that. Her wide eyes were earnest like she was desperate for Albus to understand. “He said that dragons are the most dangerous creatures ever and that we can _never, ever_ be near them. He said that they kill people all the time and that they hate people.”

Draco’s voice was calm. “I’m guessing Lyra’s class is learning about magical beasts?”

“Correct,” the headmaster said.

Albus understood Lyra. “So you tried to tell your teacher about Lulu’s dragons.”

She nodded. “Yes, ‘cause my Lulu has dragons that like people, like Opal and Big Boy and…and…” Lyra trailed off. She furrowed her brow. After a moment’s contemplation, she looked back up at Albus. “What’s the one that doesn’t like cats, Daddy?”

Albus couldn’t keep up with all the dragon names. He picked one at random. “Topaz.”

Lyra scrunched her nose up. “No, Daddy. Not that one.”

“Oh.” He’d really thought she’d take any name, but clearly, she was keeping better tabs on Lily’s dragons than Albus was. “I dunno then, Lyra.”

Lyra sighed and held her hands out hopelessly. “I tried and _tried_ to teach my teacher about dragons but he just wouldn’t _listen_!”

It was so adorable that Albus nearly burst into laughter. He had to work very hard to keep from smiling.

“Okay, so how did that turn into you calling your teacher mean names?”

Lyra shrugged. “‘Cause I kept on and kept on telling him all about real dragons but he kept on and kept on telling us lies from his books. And then he got mad at me and told me to be quiet. But I was right and he was wrong. And then he said he was going to take away my Quidditch time and make me do muggle maths instead!”

“And you lost your temper a bit?” Albus guessed.

Lyra looked down at the run in her tights again and didn’t say anything. She seemed ashamed.

“Lyra, what is a better way you could have handled that situation?” the headmaster asked.

Lyra looked up at the ceiling as she thought hard. “Maybe I could have Flooed Daddy or Papa and got them to bring photos of real dragons so that my teacher would believe me.”

“Or,” Draco said firmly, “you could have listened to your teacher and tried to see things his way.”

 _Nice try, Draco_.

“But he was wrong.”

“He wasn’t entirely wrong. Typically, dragons are dangerous for everyday people to interact with,” explained Draco.

Lyra shook her head hard. Her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair flew around her face as she did.

“No, Grandfather,” she insisted. She lifted one finger in the air. Albus was reminded forcefully of Scorpius. “One: Elliot and Iris play with dragons all the time and they send me photos and they are not dead. Two: My Lulu had a baby dragon even when she was almost Evra’s age and she isn’t dead. Three: I have touched a real dragon and I rode one and I’m alive!”

“Yes, darling, but you’re not an ‘everyday person’,” Draco countered clearly. “Your aunt is a dragonologist. That means she picks the rare dragon with a good temperament to be around you and she teaches you how to interact with them safely. Random people shouldn’t—and couldn’t—mingle with random dragons. They _are_ dangerous beasts.”

“That’s all your teacher was trying to say, Lyra,” the headmaster added. “It’s important to listen to adults and not argue.”

Lyra huffed. “But dragons _aren’t_ —” she caught Draco’s eye and stopped. She threw her hands up in the air. “ _Fine_! Okay! I give up! You _win_!”

Dramatically, she collapsed forward so she was lying on her legs. Albus reached over and patted her back.

“Her parents will talk with her,” Draco assured the headmaster. “She’s very sorry for her attitude. Aren’t you, Lyra?”

Lyra nodded mutely into her thighs. Albus figured that was as good an apology as they’d get, and Draco seemed to agree. After a few more minutes of slightly awkward small chat, Albus and Draco left the office, Lyra in tow.

“Where are we going now?” Lyra asked them brightly.

“I’m going back to work. I assume your dad is going back to work. And you’re going back to class,” Draco answered.

Lyra stopped walking. She stared at Draco incredulously. “But—no! But today is Wednesday! Today you take me for ice cream and shopping! It’s our day!”

Draco sighed. “Not on days you call your teacher names. You can’t behave that way, Lyra. You’re better than that. Did Papa and Daddy raise you to speak that way to adults?”

Horrified, with tears glistening in her wide eyes, Lyra shook her head.

“Did _I_ teach you to speak that way to adults?”

Lyra shook her head again. Her bottom lip trembled. Albus felt his heart sink at the sight.

“Did your Harry and Ginny teach you to speak that way to adults?”

Lyra didn’t shake her head right away this time. “Is Rita Skeeter an adult?”

Draco sighed heavily.

“The point is...it’s not okay to be disrespectful. And I can’t reward you with ice cream and shopping. I wish the day could have gone differently.”

Oh, Merlin. It was like Draco had just sentenced her to death. Albus watched on miserably as his daughter succumbed to hysterical wailing. She sat down right in the middle of the corridor in passive resistance and sobbed her little heart out. Albus couldn’t help but shoot his father-in-law an accusatory glance. He walked over and kneeled in front of Lyra. She threw herself into his arms and wept heavily into his cloak.

“I-I-I wanna go _home_!” Lyra wailed, her fingers gripping tight to Albus’s clothes.

“It’s not time yet, pumpkin,” Albus soothed. “You have three more hours of school.”

“ _Nooooo_!” she cried. She was having a difficult time catching her breath. “I-I-I will _die_!! I want to go _home_!! I w-want ice c-cream with G-G-Grandfather!”

Draco seemed less confident in his choice now. Albus glanced over at him and saw him looking at Lyra with wounded eyes.

“We’ll do it another day,” he tried to placate her, “when you have a better day at school.”

“I w-will _never, ever_ have a better day at school! I am not even going here anymore! I’m going to school with Benji!”

Benji went to a muggle primary school with his siblings (sans Evra, who was at Hogwarts.) Albus had been all right with Lyra going to school there, but Scorpius had been _adamant_ about putting Lyra in the brand new (and expensive) wizarding primary school, certain that it’d give her a leg up academically once she was at Hogwarts. And it had truly been great so far…Lyra had made loads of friends and was learning a lot. But she was still a bit bitter about not being at school with her cousin. She was used to doing most things with him.

“You can’t go to school with Benji,” Albus reminded her. He reached out and hoisted her up easily. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and held him in a death grip. Albus was certain they’d have to pry her off to get her back in class. “C’mon, pumpkin. Don’t do this. It makes me so sad. It would make Papa so sad, too.”

Lyra buried her face in Albus’s shoulder and sniffled. Her voice was strained with oncoming tears. “Then I’m going to school with Elliot and Iris.”

“No, you’re staying right here. Elliot and Iris live in New Zealand, Lyra, and they don’t even go to school at all; that’s not the way we’re doing things. If you want to grow up and be a professor like Harry, you’ve got to be a good student and learn loads. Chin up.”

Draco walked over and set a hand on Lyra’s back. “We will get ice cream another day. I _promise_.”

Lyra had never been great at holding grudges so Albus wasn’t surprised when she turned and reached for Draco. He held her and kissed her hair gently.

“We’ll walk you down to your classroom,” Albus told Lyra.

She certainly wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t have another meltdown. Albus considered that a victory.

* * *

 

They were walking out of the school when Scorpius apparated in, disheveled and worried and still dressed in his bright white surgery cloak. He stopped in place when he spotted his dad and husband.

“What’s happened? Is everything okay?” he asked. He crossed over to them in two long strides. Albus reached out and took his hands.

“It’s fine. Lyra got into an argument with her teacher and called him a liar with dung-breath or something like that,” Albus explained.

Scorpius looked horrified. “ _What_?! Lyra said that?” He looked between Draco and Albus, confused. “Are we certain there’s not _another_ Lyra in her class?!”

“She’s been punished,” Draco reassured Scorpius. “I took away our ice cream and shopping plans for this afternoon.”

Scorpius’s face fell. He set a hand over his heart. “Oh, she’ll be distraught!”

“She was,” Albus said (a bit bitterly. He didn’t like when his daughter was upset _ever_.) “It was awful.”

Scorpius moved to stand beside them. He set an arm over Albus’s shoulders; Albus leaned into his side and held onto his waist as his husband kissed the top of his head.

“What was she arguing about that made her _that_ upset?” Scorpius demanded.

“Dragons,” Albus and Draco chorused.

“Ooh, yes, they were starting their unit on magical beasts this week,” Scorpius recalled. He knew more about Lyra’s curriculum than the headmaster probably did. He’d specifically dressed Lyra in a hippogriff-printed skirt on Monday to match with the new unit. “What did they say about dragons?”

“The teacher told the class they’re awful and dangerous and a threat to humans.”

Scorpius blinked. “They are.”

“I know. But try telling that to Lyra who just spent all of July romping around with them. I certainly couldn’t change her opinion,” Albus said.

“Not many can,” Scorpius commented. He paused. “Or _any_ , actually. I can’t think of one time somebody changed her mind on anything…”

Albus pondered that. “I think Finnigan convinced her to stop eating meat for a week last year. Remember that? Was that Finnigan? Who caused that?”

“I think she just didn’t want to eat whatever you were cooking that week,” Scorpius said gently. “She taught herself how to read your weekly menus impressively fast.”

“I’m certain she’ll be in Slytherin,” Draco chimed in. “She’s clever.”

“She’s _very_ clever,” Scorpius agreed proudly.

Albus wasn’t so certain she’d be in Slytherin, nor had he really begun to concern himself with theories on which house she’d be placed in. They had six years yet to worry about it. And anyway, he saw strong traits from other houses just as often as he saw Slytherin traits.

“Dad, do you want to get lunch?” Scorpius asked hopefully.  He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ve got another hour ‘til I need to get back. Albus? Are you free or did you escape?”

“Escaped. But I can go to lunch,” Albus replied. He reached out and took Scorpius’s hand in his and then looked expectantly at Draco. “You coming?”

Draco’s mouth twisted. Albus already knew what his answer would be.

“I really wish I could,” he said honestly. “I’ve got to meet with the press in half an hour.”

“Uh oh,” Scorpius sang. “Did somebody in the WWEU mess up?”

“No,” Draco assured Scorpius. “We’re working on a press release for the ball Gemma’s organized. I should probably get back and let her know everything is okay.”

“Reassure her that Lyra isn’t _quite_ Azkaban material yet,” Albus quipped. Scorpius didn’t look ready to laugh about it yet: he frowned deeply.

“I’ll be sure to. Try not to get fired, Albus,” Draco said.

“Eh. I’ll try.” He wasn’t exactly head-over-heels for his job in the first place. He’d only returned to it because Lyra’s schooling was so expensive. He would’ve _much_ rather remained an at-home dad permanently.

Scorpius and Albus apparated to a bistro in Hogsmeade for lunch. It was a nice day so they opted for an outside table. Scorpius held Albus’s hand over the top of the table as they perused the menus (even though they both knew they’d end up getting the same thing they always did.)

“We should pop in and visit Evra while we’re here,” Scorpius said brightly, his eyes on the castle looming in the distance. “I wonder if she got her essay done in time…she was quite worried about that.”

“I’m sure she did. She and Remus probably stayed up all night in the Common Room working on it. They really put the ‘hard work’ in Hufflepuff,” Albus said. He set his menu down. “I think I’m going to get what I always get.”

Scorpius set his down, too. “Me too.”

Albus grinned at his husband. His husband beamed back. Albus’s thoughts flew at once to the naughty letters they’d been sending back that morning. He felt his ears grow hot at the memory; he shifted in his seat.

“When I got Draco’s letter during the meeting, I thought it was a reply from you,” Albus admitted.

Scorpius’s porcelain skin went pink. “No, I would _never_ send a naughty letter during a meeting! I knew what time it started. I’ve saved my reply to tell you later. In person.”

Albus’s grin only grew. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Scorpius squeezed Albus’s hand affectionately. He knocked their feet together beneath the table playfully.

“Might be tricky finding time for ‘private replies’, but we can do it!”

Albus laughed. “It won’t be any harder than usual! Lyra ought to go to sleep a bit earlier than normal tonight, actually; I’m sure her breakdown today exhausted her.”

Scorpius frowned. “My poor _pumpkin_ …I hope she wasn’t too upset. She’ll be _much_ happier come this evening, anyway. She’ll probably forget that she even got in trouble at all. Merlin, she’s going to be so surprised…” Scorpius trailed off with a soft smile. Albus was lost.

“Surprised? Wait, hang on. I’m confused. Did we plan something for tonight? Because if we did, I completely forgot about it. I was planning on making dinner, helping Lyra finish her potions project, making love to you, and then going to sleep.”

Scorpius’s grey eyes widened. “Albus. There’s no way you forgot. I reminded you _at least_ ten times.”

Albus shook his head. “No, I don’t remember you saying anything about tonight! What’s happening tonight?!”

“Your sister’s coming. Didn’t you wonder why I was cleaning so much yesterday?”

Albus balked. In all honesty, he _hadn’t_ noticed his husband cleaning yesterday. “Oh, er…yeah.” He decided to keep going in hopes Scorpius would overlook his unconvincing lie. “Scorpius, she’s not coming today. They aren’t coming until November. I remember ‘cause it’s near my birthday.”

Scorpius shook his head before Albus had even stopped talking. “No. No, Al. It’s near _Henry’s_ birthday. His birthday’s next week.”

Albus was horrified. He felt a creeping realization travel down his spine. Now that Scorpius said that, he could vaguely remember him mentioning something about company in October, though at the time he’d been helping Lyra get ready for school and hadn’t really listened.

“Are you _sure_?” Albus demanded. “I’m positive Lily told me November!”

“I’m _certain_.”

Albus realized a bigger problem. “And they’re staying with us?!”

“For some of the time. I think Lyra and the twins will be inseparable for the first two or three days, but after that, I’m sure she and Elliot will start bickering…the plan is for them to switch over to your parents’ house at that point, that way Harry and Ginny still get their one-on-one time with the twins.”

“But we haven’t told Lyra!”

“It’s a surprise! She’s going to be so excited!”

“No!! No, she’s going to be a nightmare! She’s _not_ going to like getting up and going to school every morning when her cousins are at the house—especially when they’ve only just arrived the night prior!”

“Maybe they can tag along,” Scorpius suggested. He’d only barely gotten the words out before he realized what he’d said. Albus looked at him. He looked at Albus. They both snorted and broke into laughter a few moments later. Imagining the twins in such a structured environment was a bit hilarious. They regularly ran around the sanctuary barefoot with little to no adult supervision; being suddenly shoved in a classroom with dozens of rules would probably do their little heads in.

Albus sighed. “I don’t understand why they can’t just stay with James and Nora.”

Scorpius looked a bit offended. “Because I invited them to stay with us! And anyway, which house would _you_ want to stay at? A home with one five-year-old or a home with eight kids? Poor James and Nora have enough kids in their house without twins added into the mix.”

Albus knew Scorpius looked forward to the Rowles’ visits, and he usually did, too. He and his sister were probably closer now than they had ever been at any point in their lives thanks to the shared adventure of raising kids at the same time. But there was no denying the fact that having visitors was inconvenient. _Especially_ visitors he hadn’t planned on.

“I just really thought it was November,” Albus sulked.

Scorpius squeezed his hand. “This is why I keep encouraging you to use the diary I bought you. It helps to stay organized.”

Albus gave a noncommittal grunt. He was realizing that it would be impossible for them to act on the tension their naughty letters had built up that morning, and he was feeling even grumpier because of that.

* * *

 

Albus had only been back at his desk for maybe five minutes when his brother stepped in.

“Is Lyra all right?” he asked at once, his brow furrowed in concern. He crossed over and sat in front of Albus’s desk. James’s newest baby was snoozing deeply in a carrier attached to his chest; the baby slept better than any child Albus had ever seen. James often sat through entire meetings with him without the baby crying even once.

“Yeah, she’s all right,” Albus said at once. He didn’t particularly want to share why he’d gone to the school. He _hated_ feeling like a bad dad in front of James; it was embarrassing and often made him feel quite inferior, and he was prone to living in that self-pitying emotion for a long while. “Just some paperwork stuff.”

James gave him a knowing look. “Paperwork never ends, huh?”

Albus shrugged. He turned his focus to James’s child rather than his own. “I can’t believe he’s _still_ asleep. There’s no way Lou is real. Why is he so good?”

James leaned his face down and kissed Lou’s soft, dark hair. “Because he’s my son and my children are perfect.”

Albus crossed his arms. “Are you forgetting last month when Finnigan snuck onto the Hogwarts Express?”

James didn’t miss a beat. “Seven out of eight of my children are perfect. Though, to be fair, what he did took quite a lot of planning and guts…he acquired his own trunk and set of school robes and made it all the way to Hogsmeade before he was found out…”

Albus couldn’t help but laugh. “I really thought Nora might kill him. I’ve _never_ seen her so upset.”

“Well, we thought he’d been kidnapped! By a muggle pedophile! We were beside ourselves with worry!”

Albus held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not judging her. It was refreshing. I always wondered if it was possible for her to get genuinely angry.”

“She’s been angry loads of times!”

“But not _Potter angry._ That was _Potter-level_ anger.”

“And Finnigan pulled a Potter-level stunt. Mind you, Delilah, Benji, and Alice found it hilarious.”

Albus pictured their adorable little faces. His namesake, in particular, had probably giggled for _ages_. He smiled. “I’ll bet they did. And you know Henry will certainly try to live up to it.”

“He’ll try to do one better. He’ll probably make it to the actual Sorting ceremony...”

Albus snorted. As they lapsed into silence and Albus mulled over all the naughty things the Potter children had gotten up to over the years, he felt much better about Lyra’s poor behavior that morning. She may’ve been a bit cheeky and rude, but at least she wasn’t stowing away on a train.

“I’m sure Iris and Elliot will do something to top Finnigan’s stunt by next week. Remember last time they visited? I still don’t think Dad’s found all the things they buried in the garden yet…he found his wristwatch and a spoon, but Iris said they’d also ‘hidden a crown underground’…we’re still not sure what they were referring to…”

“Yeah, I definitely thought they were coming in November until an hour ago,” Albus admitted.

James gave him an odd look. “Are you serious? Mum and Dad have been talking about it for weeks.”

“Mum and Dad are always talking about the twins. I tune it out sometimes.”

“That’s not very nice…”

Albus ignored James’s halfhearted reproach. “So you knew she’d be here _today_?”

James nodded. “Tonight or in the morning. They had to take a Muggle airplane and those are always uncertain.”

Albus tried to imagine Lyra being stuck on a muggle airplane for nearly an entire day. She was rather mild in comparison to her cousins and even she would have a difficult time with that.

“I bet that’s going…well,” Albus commented.

James snickered. “I was just thinking the same thing.” He glanced quickly at his watch. “I need to get back to my office; I have a meeting with the headmistress of the new Hogwarts campus. I’ll let Aunt Hermione know that Lyra’s okay. See you.”

“Thanks. Bye,” Albus said.

He lied to his boss and told him that Lyra had been ill to excuse his sudden absence from the meeting and then settled down to get some work done. If past visits were any indication, he wouldn’t be getting a lot done at home for a while, so he decided to stay late today and get as much done as possible, hoping he could get ahead of the curve. Of course, every hour or so his boss would drop _more_ work down on his desk, so by the time Albus stumbled out around six that evening, he was nearly as far behind as he’d been that morning.

“What’s the _point_?” Albus grumbled aloud as he stepped into his house. He shut the door behind himself and flung his briefcase on the floor beside it. “I work for ages and it’s like it doesn’t even matter.”

Scorpius and Lyra were where they always were in the evenings—at the kitchen table working on homework. Lyra jumped up and raced over to Albus’s arms. He hugged her tight and felt the frustration knotted in his chest loosen significantly at just that one embrace.

“Daddy, I know what you have to do,” Lyra mumbled into Albus’s cloak.

Albus leaned back and looked down at Lyra. “Yeah? Okay, let’s hear it.”

She peered up at him seriously from behind her gold glasses. Her eyesight potion usually wore off after school, but they didn’t give it to her again until bedtime so there wouldn’t be any light to hurt her eyes (it always made eyes ultra-sensitive to light for a few minutes after taking it.)

“You need to quit and stay here all day and I’ll stay here all day and _you_ can teach me right here.” She pointed at the kitchen table.

Albus felt a sea of longing churn within his chest. “Oh, pumpkin, I want that more than anything. But you’re older now. You need to be at school.” _It’s very important to your papa, and what’s important to him is important to me, too._

“Papa says it’s okay. I don’t have to go anymore,” Lyra lied.

Albus arched an eyebrow. He looked over Lyra to Scorpius. Scorpius shook his head and rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Albus looked back at Lyra.

“Is that so?”

“That is _so_.”

He leaned down and tickled her side. She fell into happy giggles.

“If you’re going to lie, Lyra, you should at least wait until the person you’re lying about leaves the room,” Albus coached.

Lyra—still laughing—shrugged. “It was never gonna work anyway.”

“I’m glad you can recognize that.” He hoisted her up and carried her back over to the kitchen table. “What are you working on? Have you finished your potions project?”

“Yes! Papa and I did an antiseptic potion. It was purple.”

Albus sat beside Scorpius and set Lyra in his lap. “How exciting!” He smiled as Scorpius reached over and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Did you talk to Papa about what happened today at school?”

Lyra gasped excitedly. Albus hadn’t expected that reaction.

“No!” She turned to face Scorpius. “Mae gave me a cupcake at lunch! She brought _two_ —one for me and one for her! It had pink frosting on top and a little sweet that was sort of sour.”

Scorpius exchanged a quick, amused look with Albus. Scorpius nodded encouragingly at Lyra and indulged her story.

“Really? And how did it taste?”

Lyra flopped back against Albus’s chest. “ _A—ma—zing_ ,” she said happily. “Like all the stars in the sky came down into a cupcake.”

“Oh, wow! That _does_ sound yummy!” Scorpius agreed. He arched a white-blond eyebrow. “But what happened with your teacher? Why did Daddy and Grandfather have to go down to your school?”

Lyra became abruptly interested in Albus’s hands. She grabbed them and studied his palms intently as if she were an expert at palm-reading. She didn’t respond.

“Lyra?” Scorpius pressed gently.

She squirmed off Albus’s lap, slid down underneath the table, and then crawled out from the other side.

“I gotta go make my bed, I forgot!!” she exclaimed. She sprinted from the kitchen so quickly that she slipped on her socked feet and nearly fell over.  

“She’s _very_ afraid of disappointing you,” Albus commented needlessly.

Scorpius looked a bit troubled by that. “Why though? Does she think I’ll get angry? I never yell at her. I never get angry with her. Does she think I won’t love her anymore?!”

“No. I just think she really esteems you. You’re like… _Papa_ —” Albus elevated his voice to a tone of wonder on the word ‘papa’—“And I’m just Daddy.”

“You’re not ‘just’ anything,” Scorpius said at once, his voice soft and wounded on Albus’s behalf. “You’re probably her favorite person in the entire world.”

“This isn’t a competition,” Albus argued (partially because he wasn’t sure he’d win if it were; Lyra _loved_ her papa.) “She’s our girl. And, to be fair, she didn’t exactly want me to know about the incident, either. I wouldn’t think much of it. She’s Lyra. She’s a bit odd.”

“I guess so,” Scorpius agreed, but Albus knew he’d be keeping a close eye on the issue.

“Are you hungry?” Albus asked. “Want me to start cooking?”

“Oh—great news, Albus! You don’t have to cook tonight! Harry’s invited us over the Den for dinner. Lily and Caden are coming straight there once they arrive, so your parents are going to do a big family dinner.”

Albus sighed, relieved. “Oh, great. I really didn’t feel like cooking. Was my dad over here earlier?”

“Yeah, Draco told Ginny about Lyra’s mishap, and Ginny told Harry, and then Harry came over to talk to her about it,” Scorpius affirmed.

“And by ‘talk about it’ you mean he laughed at her commentary and coddled her.”

Scorpius inclined his head. “Naturally.”

Albus sighed. “She’s going to be _incorrigible._ Oh, if my brother mentions what happened today, I sort of…told him that Lyra’s school called about paperwork. I didn’t tell him what she did or that she was in trouble. So don’t tell him, okay?”

“Er…your mum knows, Albus. There’s no way James won’t find out. I’m sure Ginny’s already gossiping with him about it as we speak.”

It was a fair point. “Shit. You’re right. _Ugh_ , I hate when he out-dads me. He’s such a show-off. With his eight kids and his fancy job and his spectacular multi-tasking…eugh.”

“I thought we decided that _dad_ ing—is that a verb now? Dad-ing?—isn’t a competition?” Scorpius reminded him gently.

Albus blinked. “It’s not a competition between you and me because we’re on the same team. It can still be a competition between my brother and me.”

“Ah. I see. And your sister?”

Albus gestured nonchalantly. “I know I out-dad her. She’s a mess. She lets the twins roam miles from the house unsupervised.”

He had been genuinely panicked when they’d visited over the summer and he’d watched Lily let her four-year-old twins run off to Merlin knows where all alone. He had refused to let Lyra go with them for obvious safety reasons.

“It’s a miracle they haven’t been severely injured,” Scorpius agreed gravely.

Lyra’s voice drifted from the doorway. “Who?”

Albus turned and watched as Lyra reentered the kitchen. She must’ve been playing in her room; she was wearing a tiara and one of Albus’s cloaks.

“Your cousins,” replied Scorpius. “Lulu lets them go wherever they want and one day they’ll get hurt because they’re too little for that.”

“No, they’ll be okay,” Lyra reassured them. “They stick together and Big Boy goes with them all the time.” Lyra walked over and stopped behind her dads’ chairs. “When will we go back to Lulu and Cade’s house?”

Albus glanced at Scorpius. He was already looking at him. They weren’t good at lying to Lyra.

“I’m not sure when we’ll go back to New Zealand,” Albus hedged. It was the truth. He’d just conveniently left out the fact that her aunt, uncle, and cousins were probably on their way to Harry and Ginny’s as they spoke.

“Oh,” Lyra said sadly. “Can we next weekend?”

Scorpius laughed. “I don’t think so, pumpkin. Are you ready to talk about what happened at school?”

Lyra looked ready to bolt from the room again, but Scorpius slid his chair back and opened his arms wide for a hug before she could. She stepped into his embrace. Albus watched with a full, tender heart as Scorpius smoothed Lyra’s hair back.

“It’s okay,” he promised her. “I’m not angry with you. You can always tell me if you make mistakes. We all do it. I make mistakes all the time. I only wanted to talk to you about it.”

“But I would rather talk about my cupcake,” Lyra mumbled.

Albus snorted softly. Scorpius appeared to struggle to contain his own laughter. He kissed Lyra’s head.

“We can talk about _both_ ,” he promised.

Lyra smiled into Scorpius’s shirt.

* * *

 

Lyra and Benji greeted each other with huge grins, and within a minute or so, they were racing out into the garden to play. Nora hugged Albus and Scorpius as warmly as ever.

“How are you?” she asked. “Everything going well?”

“Yep!” Scorpius beamed.

“It’s _okay_ ,” Albus said. Nora peered at him curiously. He elaborated. “I wasn’t really planning on having company.”

Scorpius sighed. “He’s chronically disorganized. He failed to realize they were coming today.”

Albus shrugged.

“I thought you’d be relieved,” Nora said. “The twins’ll be around to keep Lyra occupied and entertained. I don’t know how you two manage having only one child. I’d probably go mad.”

“One child is _always_ easier than three. Or _eight_ ,” Albus argued. He spotted Alice running after Finnigan and Rory as fast as her little two-year-old legs would carry her. He grinned. “I’m going to go see Allie.”

He stepped past Nora and Scorpius and followed after his niece. He reached out and scooped Alice up mid-run. She let out a surprised squeal and then turned around to look at him. Her dark eyes lit up at once. Albus cradled her like a little baby and kissed her cheek. She grinned and grinned.

“Alby!!” she celebrated. “Fwin and Wowy go.”

He pouted. “Are they running away from you?”

Alice nodded. Her curls bounced as she did.

“Why don’t you come with me instead?” Albus suggested. “Want to see Scorpy?”

“And Lywa!”

“Yes, and ‘Lywa’,” Albus promised seriously.

He carried Alice through the thick throng of people. The Den was packed past capacity at this point, the air stifling and hot, so Ginny ordered everybody out into the garden. Evra and Remus got put on babysitting duty in the sitting room while all the adults rushed to get the tables, chairs, and utensils outside in time. They had just finished setting everything up when an audible _pop_ near Albus’s ear alerted him to a new arrival. He turned, halfway expecting it to be the expected guests, but it was only Rose. She was still in her nicely-pressed work robes and was clutching a stack of magically sealed parchment.

“No. Absolutely not,” Albus warned her. He backed away. “Don’t you _dare_ deliver any work to me.”

Rose scowled. “I’m not! I’m here for dinner, you ninny. These papers are for your sister. Department of Mysteries sent them along. My mum said Lyra was ill today or something? Is she okay?”

Albus had wanted to pry on what the Department of Mysteries was sending his sister, but at Rose’s mention of Lyra, he got distracted.

“No, she wasn’t ill. She’s fine. It wasn’t a big deal.” He didn’t want to tell Rose the real reason, either. She didn’t have kids, but that wouldn’t stop her from critiquing Albus’s parenting, and he was extremely sensitive about that.

“Oh, okay, good. I was worried. Iset said spattergroit has been making rounds again. Two kids at the group home have it. It’s awful.”

“Gross. Are they quarantined?”

“Immediately. After the lime pox debacle, nobody’s playing fast and loose with infectious diseases.”

Albus certainly wasn’t. There hadn’t been a new case of lime pox in two years now, but Albus _still_ pulled Lyra behind him any time they passed by somebody in anything that even slightly resembled reptile scales. The Wizarding World had been slowly rebuilding its population of magical children, but the damage had been done: Henry’s year down to Alice’s was sadly empty. Albus knew the mission now was to try and find a cure for lime pox, but last he’d heard, the attempts were going as poorly as always. A vaccine had been created and approved for use in dragons—largely the work of Lily and some colleagues in Ecuador—but there was nothing so far for humans.

“Good. Maybe homeschooling Lyra isn’t such a bad idea after all…”

Lyra wouldn’t get in trouble if she wasn’t at school in the first place. And he’d get to go back to being a full-time dad. Sure, she was learning loads at her school, but if Albus put his mind to it, he could teach her the same stuff…surely he could…

He was seriously entertaining the concept when he heard another _pop_! He turned towards the sound. This time, it _was_ his sister. She was looking particularly exhausted and was holding tightly to Iris. His niece’s long copper hair had slipped messily from its plait and was framing her tired face. She looked about two seconds away from falling asleep where she was standing and hardly seemed to process where she was or who the people in the garden were; she kept her little arms around Lily’s waist and leaned sleepily against her hip.

“Auntie Lulu!” Finnigan exclaimed. He crossed the garden in a few long-legged strides and threw his arms around his aunt. Lily squeezed him back with one arm, her other still around Iris’s shoulders. Finnigan turned to Iris after dropping his arms from Lily and tugged playfully at her hair.

“You’re freakishly quiet. Did you go mute since I last saw you?” he teased. “There’s a miracle if I ever saw one.”

Iris stuck her tongue out at Finnigan. But two seconds later, she had thrown herself at him and melted into his hug.

Everybody descended upon Lily and Iris. Albus hung back and squinted around, searching for his daughter. She must’ve still been out near the shed with Benji and Delilah. She would be in for a surprise when she returned.

Another _pop!_ sounded around the garden. Albus turned towards the sound. His brother-in-law had appeared, though he looked nearly as exhausted as Lily and Iris did. The only person perhaps more tired was Elliot, who was fast asleep in his dad’s arms, clearly so exhausted that even the discomfort of side-along apparition couldn’t wake him.

“Elliot!!” Iris exclaimed. She’d shaken her exhaustion surprisingly quickly. She ran over to her brother and father and pulled impatiently at Elliot’s leg. “Elliot, wake up!! Wake up!! Wake _up_ , we’re here, you sleepy little bastard!!”

Albus’s eyes widened. It always felt so unnatural to hear profanity coming from little kids’ mouths, though considering the frequency that it came from the twins’ mouths, he wasn’t sure why he still felt instinctively surprised. The foul language mixed with Iris’s innocent voice and endearing accent made for quite an arresting combination.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Iris, a proper insult needs to be _accurate._ Elliot’s not a bastard—oh, wait, I guess technically he is. Carry on.”

Albus hadn’t noticed Elliot waking up, but when he glanced back over towards Caden, Elliot was sitting straight up in his arms as if his mother’s voice had pulled him right from his dreams. His hair was mused in every direction and his glasses were sitting crooked on his face.

“I’m _not_!” Elliot burst, offended. “I’m _not_ a bastard!!”

“Yes, you are! You are so!” Iris shot back. “Mummy, he is! Isn’t he?!”

“Yep. And so are you.”

Iris gasped. She set a hand over her heart, affronted. “I am _not_!”

“How would your twin be one if you’re not?” Lily challenged. She crossed her arms. “Do you even know what a bastard is?”

“No! But I _know_ that _I’m_ not one!”

“A bastard is a—”

“CADE?! IRIS?! LULU?! ELLIOT?!” Lyra had rejoined them. Albus turned at the sound of his daughter’s voice. Her grin was radiant and breathtaking; he immediately lost any and all annoyance he’d felt at his sister’s visit and instead felt grateful that something had happened to make his daughter that happy. She shoved her way through the surrounding people and ran full-speed at the Rowles. Iris greeted her with a warm hug. The two girls jumped up and down and giggled, their arms still wrapped around each other, and as soon as Elliot had squirmed his way out of Caden’s arms and onto the grass, he was pulled into their hug celebration, too.

Albus glanced up at Scorpius and found him watching the scene with a tender smile. The garden soon filled with conversation and laughter as the new arrivals greeted and hugged everybody. Albus hugged his sister warmly, surprised to realize that he actually _had_ missed her a lot, and then he hugged his brother-in-law, too. Harry and Ginny monopolized the twins, and then James and Nora and their children swooped in. By the time Albus and Scorpius were able to get close to the twins, they were exhausted again, though valiantly fighting that exhaustion. Iris rested her cheek against Albus’s shoulder and yawned as he lifted her up into a hug.

“Sleepy?” he asked her.

“No,” she lied. She yawned heavily once more. “Did you plant irises in your new garden?”

Albus was surprised by her good memory. Last time he’d seen her, she had ordered him to plant irises in the garden of his and Scorpius’s new home so that he could ‘remember her’. He’d promised that he would. And of course, he’d forgotten.

“I tried, but I’m not very good at it,” Albus lied. “I didn’t plant them right.”

She patted his arm gently. “I thought you might be bad at it.”

Unsure whether to feel amused or insulted, Albus chuckled uneasily.

“Okay, ready, set…switch!” Scorpius exclaimed. Albus turned and ‘switched’ kids with him. Elliot found it _hilarious_ every time and giggled happily into Albus’s shoulder once he’d situated him in his arms.

“And how was your flight?” Albus asked Elliot.

“I _hated_ it,” Elliot told him earnestly. His eyebrows pursed in an angry expression. It made his glasses slip slightly down the bridge of his nose. “Mummy and Daddy said we can’t take Big Boy with us because pets can’t go on airplanes, but do you know what I saw at the airplane place?”

“What?” Albus asked.

“People had big dogs and they were taking them with them—in cages! I was _so angry_! Big Boy could fit in really big cages! I wish he were here right now.”

Elliot rested his cheek sadly against Albus’s shoulder. Albus scrambled to change the subject before Elliot had a meltdown. His nephew was both overtly sensitive and quick to anger; due to that dangerous combination, his tantrums were truly legendary.

“You’ll see him again soon. Hey, that’s a wicked shirt you’ve got on! Where’d you get that?”

Elliot leaned back in Albus’s arms and peered down at his shirt as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing. He grinned a second later, bringing his dimple to life. “Oh yeah!! Auntie Aster made it for me. It has a Hungarian Horntail,” Elliot said proudly.

“Wow! Are those your favorite dragons?”

Elliot considered that question with more seriousness than a five-year-old should be able to consider anything. “ _Welllll…_ hmm…I love our Opaleyes the mostest because they are Mummy’s…but I _really_ like Hungarian Horntails and all their spikes…but Hebridean Blacks have purple eyes and their poo is silver.”

Albus blinked, taken aback. “Sorry. Their…poo? It’s silver?”

“Yes. Not our Opaleyes. Their poo just looks like poo.”

“How disappointing.”

Elliot nodded sadly. “Yes. It is.” He turned and looked over towards Iris, Lyra, and Scorpius. Albus hadn’t heard whatever they were talking about, but Elliot had clearly somehow been listening to their conversation while having his own because he exclaimed: “I want to sleep in Lyra’s room, too!!”

“Duh,” Iris told him. “I’m sleeping in there so you are, too.”

As if it was logically impossible for the two to sleep in separate places. Albus and Scorpius shared a grin before looking back at the kids. Albus set Elliot on the ground so he could join Lyra and Iris’s little ‘huddle’.

“Where’s Benji?” Elliot asked Lyra. He stuffed his hand into his pocket and withdrew what looked suspiciously like a dragon egg. How the _hell_ had that fit in there?! “I have something I want to show—!”

Iris—clearly not having realized that Albus had already seen the egg—shot her hand out and quickly pushed Elliot’s down so he was no longer holding the dragon egg up in the air.

“ _No_!” she scolded quietly. “Don’t wave it around!! Give it to me!”

“No!”

“You have to _hide_ it,” she told him seriously.

Lyra squirmed and tried to get a closer look at the dragon egg, but Iris glared at Elliot until he stuffed it back into his trousers.

“I want to see!! I want to see it!” Lyra exclaimed.

Albus took a step over to them. “What are you three talking about?” he asked loudly.

Lyra jumped guiltily. Elliot squinted up at the stars like he hadn’t even heard Albus speak. And Iris gave Albus a deceptively innocent smile.

“Nothing,” she said sweetly.

Albus arched an eyebrow. Scorpius stepped over and stood beside him, clearly catching onto the already-forming mischief.

“It didn’t sound like ‘nothing’,” Albus challenged. He nodded his head towards Elliot’s pocket—which looked as empty as ever. How the hell had these kids managed an extension charm? “What’s Elliot got in his pocket?”

Lyra’s eyes widened. She looked from Scorpius to Albus and then said, in a somewhat guilt-choked voice: “Oh, I gotta go see Delilah, ‘cause I gotta.”

She turned and sprinted from their group. Elliot slapped his hands over the openings of his pockets.

“I have nothing in my pockets ever,” Elliot told them.

Iris squinted her eyes at Elliot quickly—so quickly that Albus almost missed the short, silent judging look—and then turned to smile at Albus again.

“Are we in trouble?” she asked him.

Albus crossed his arms. “What do you think?”

Iris blinked. Her long, copper-colored eyelashes brushed her cheeks as she did. Her brown eyes filled steadily with apprehension and worry. “I think that I’m sorry, Uncle Albus.”

He caved. There was something that reminded him so much if Lyra in her eyes that he could hardly retain his sternness. With a heavy sigh, Iris walked over, stuck her hand into Elliot’s pocket, and withdrew…a sandwich.

She walked over to Albus with her head bowed and handed him the sandwich without even looking at him.

“I took it from the airplane. I’m sorry. I stole.”

Albus was absolutely speechless. He took the offered sandwich hesitantly and then turned to look at Scorpius. Scorpius hadn’t seen the dragon egg, so he was falling completely for Iris’s trick. He leaned down and pulled her into a warm hug.

“Oh, Iris, you’re _allowed_ to take your food from the muggle airplanes! You didn’t steal! It’s okay!”

Albus met Elliot’s eyes while Scorpius cooed over Iris. Elliot stared back bravely and steadily, clearly determined not to break.

“And that’s all you’ve got in those pockets, is it?” Albus challenged Elliot.

Elliot pursed his expression in deep thought. He reached into his pockets to double check. He pulled out a used tissue. “Got this, too. Here you go. You can have it.” He held it out to Albus. Albus grimaced.

“No, you keep that,” Albus urged. “You’re sure there’s nothing else?”

“Nope,” Elliot declared.

“If I check your pockets, I won’t find anything else?”

“Nope,” Elliot repeated. He didn’t seem nervous or apprehensive at all. He was good. They were both good. Oh, Merlin.

“This isn’t over,” Albus told the twins. Rather than pat down his nephew like a criminal, he decided to talk to their parents about it. “Run along and play until dinner’s ready.”

The twins took off obediently. Albus waited until they were out of earshot and then turned to face Scorpius.

“Elliot had a dragon egg, Scorpius.”

Scorpius looked confused. “What? A dragon egg? You’re sure? I think it was just a sandwich…”

“No. It was not just a sandwich!” Albus insisted. He reached out and grabbed Scorpius’s forearms so he would look at him. He stared intently at his grey eyes. “I saw it. Elliot pulled out a _dragon egg_. They were tricking us!”

Scorpius frowned. “Did Iris know?”

“Yes! Of course! She was tricking you!” Albus repeated.

Scorpius was speechless. “But…what are they going to do with a dragon egg?!”

“Better question: how did they manage to smuggle a dragon egg all the way across the world without anybody finding out?” Albus challenged. A worse thought occurred to him. “I wonder how much longer the egg has ‘til it hatches…”

Scorpius pressed his lips together. “I…think we should go speak with their parents.”

“Agreed.”

Most of the dinner guests had disappeared into the house while they’d been chatting. Albus walked into the incredibly crowded kitchen and struggled to make it through the massive amounts of nieces and nephews running about. He spotted his sister sitting on the counter chatting with their dad as he finished up the cooking. He nearly stepped on a wayward Pygmy Puff as he crossed the densely populated room; in his effort to keep from killing the creature, he tripped, fell forward into Nora, who then fell into James, who promptly dropped a massive glass dish full of sprouts onto the floor. Silence fell over the kitchen at the shattering crash that ensued. Albus swore.

“Sorry! Sorry, Nora!”

“YAY!! NO SPROUTS!” Delilah cheered. A few other kids joined in her celebration.

“Hush, you two!” Ginny scolded. “Are you okay, James?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” James promised. He turned around and set his hands on Nora’s arms as if to steady her. “Are _you_ okay? Did you fall? Are you feeling all right?”

“I fell and knocked into her,” Albus admitted. “Those sodding Pygmy Puffs are running around. Sorry.”

Albus and his mum worked together to vanish the ruined sprouts and shattered glass. By the time that was over, Albus had momentarily forgotten what he’d been planning to talk to Lily about. His dad roped him into helping with the cooking, and it wasn’t until later—when they were all seated outside and enjoying dinner—that he remembered the dragon egg crisis. He leaned around the back of Scorpius’s chair and tapped Nora’s arm.

“Hey, let me switch seats with you for a second,” Albus requested. “I want to talk to Lily and Caden.”

“Sure,” Nora agreed. She rose with baby Lou and switched seats with Albus. She smiled across the table at Lyra; Albus heard the two begin talking about ‘Benji’s muggle school’ before he turned to face his sister. She looked at him expectantly.

“What’s happening? You’ve got your pouty, worried face on.”

Albus looked from her brown eyes to Caden’s blue ones. Once he was certain he had their full attention, he leaned in and lowered his voice slightly. “Your kids have brought a dragon egg with them.”

Caden sighed but didn’t look particularly surprised or alarmed. Albus felt he should’ve been _much_ more concerned.

“A _dragon egg_ ,” he repeated seriously. He looked from Caden’s calm expression to Lily’s slightly-annoyed one. “Your children smuggled an XXXXX Creature across the planet.”

“I don’t particularly agree with the Ministry of Magic’s danger classification scale,” Lily piped up. She stabbed her fork at her plate and ate another mouthful of potatoes. “It’s got loads of flaws.”

For a moment, he thought they were going to outright ignore the fact that the twins had a dragon egg. He looked at them in horror. But after Lily had finished chewing her food, she gestured across the table at the twins, who were sitting between Lyra and Benji. “Oi! You two! Come here!”

Iris and Elliot exchanged a quick look. Iris pointed at her plate.

“I’m eating right now. Maybe later.”

“ _Come. Here._ ”

At their mum’s dangerous tone, the twins scampered from their seats and dove beneath the table. Caden leaned back and glanced under the table.

“She meant go _around the table,_ not crawl under it,” Caden said.

“She didn’t say that,” Elliot called from below, his voice a bit muffled.

“We can’t read minds, Daddy,” Iris finished.

The twins managed to knock into the table so hard that Lily’s wine glass tipped over and flooded Caden’s plate. He jabbed his wand at the mess and cleaned it before the twins had emerged. Lily scooted her chair over towards Albus’s to make room for the twins to stand between her and Caden’s chairs. Iris and Elliot looked between their parents, their expressions flickering between feigned innocence and calculating scrutiny as they attempted to figure out how much their parents knew. Lily leaned in close to their faces, her eyes narrowed dangerously, and whispered: “Give. It. To. Me. _Now._ ”

Elliot and Iris looked at each other. They seemed to be communicating without words. A half-second later, they turned to face Lily, leaned in, and promptly kissed her cheeks in perfect synchrony. They turned around and did the same to their dad. He might’ve melted a bit, but Lily only glared harder.

“I am counting to _three_ ,” she told them. “One…two…—” Elliot and Iris stared stubbornly back and made no attempts to pull anything from their pockets— “ _Three_.”

The twins turned and made an attempt to bolt, but Caden reached out and wrapped his arms around their waists before they could take a step. Iris smacked gently at his arms and squirmed.

“Let me go! Let me go! Open your big freaky arms!!”

“Free us!! Free us!!” Elliot chanted.

Lily murmured an incantation and waved her wand at her kids. Their pockets were turned inside out magically. Albus—and most everybody else now that the twins had gotten the entire table’s attention—watched in shock as a river of things flowed from their pockets. A confusing combination of objects rained down on the ground: wristwatches, two mugs, coins, sweets, rocks, feathers, something that looked suspiciously like a human tooth, three books, five muggle pens in various colors, a tiny bottle of airplane vodka, and—a dragon egg. Lily reached out and swiped the egg from midair before it could hit the ground.

“You bloody little _devils_!!” she exclaimed.

Caden seemed more concerned with the human tooth. He’d leaned over to pick it up off the grass. “Whose tooth is this?!”

“Mine! It’s my tooth! Can I have it back?” Iris pleaded.

“No! I thought we put this away! It’s your first lost tooth—why do you have it?” demanded Caden.

“Because I might need it again one day!”

He continued picking through the objects while Lily glared at the kids and seethed.

“There’s my mug I’ve been missing…Mummy’s wristwatch she lost last year…these are coins from…I don’t even know, Lily, what country are these coins from?”

Lily looked coldly upon the money. “Fucking _Tasmania_.”

“Tasmania! Where the bloody hell did you two get this stuff?”

Caden looked at Elliot first. Elliot looked at Iris. Iris looked at Lily. Lily glowered. Finally, Iris said: “Okay, okay…we took it all from Opal’s nest.”

Lily held the dragon egg up in the air. It rested heavily in her palm, taking up nearly her entire hand. Its shell was thick and pale grey. “You didn’t get _this_ from Opal’s nest. _Where_ did you get this?”

“And you’re not supposed to be in Opal’s nest. How did you get up onto the roof?” Caden demanded. Opal nested on top of a building on the sanctuary. “And you shouldn’t be picking through his nest in general. He picks up all sorts of dangerous things. You could get hurt.”

Elliot’s eyes lit up. “Oooh, there was a sword in there!” Elliot remembered excitedly. “It was _giant!_ I tried to take it, but it was too heavy and it wouldn’t fit.”

Iris looked at Elliot like he was an idiot. She buried her face in her hands and sighed.

“You tried to put an entire sword in your pocket?” Caden repeated flatly.

Lily seemed more concerned with the egg. “Iris. Elliot. _Look at me_.” They turned and looked in their mother’s eyes. She held the egg up again. “ _Where_ did you get this?”

The twins turned their heads slowly to look at each other again. Lily reached out and gently held Iris’s face in her hands, stopping her movement.

“Nuh-uh, you look at _me_ ,” Lily said sternly. “No secret twin conversations. Where did you get the egg, Iris?”

Iris exhaled heavily. “Fine. From Pearl’s nest.”

Surprise flickered behind Lily’s eyes. “Pearl laid six eggs. I collected all six and I checked on them before we left. How’d you have time to steal one?”

“Pearl laid _seven_ eggs,” Elliot corrected. Lily glanced over at him but didn’t let go of Iris’s face. “We waited all night long for her to lay them.”

Realization painted Lily’s features. “And you took one before I got there that morning and counted them.”

“So you snuck out of your beds?” Caden summarized. “Is that what you’re telling us? You snuck out of your beds, left the house, and went into the sanctuary all alone in the dead of night to steal a dragon egg?”

“Yes.” Elliot didn’t seem to want to lie to his dad.

Lily’s face was turning a bit red. Caden sighed again. “Of _course_ you did. And _what_ were you planning on doing with this egg?”

Iris glanced over at her dad, but because Lily was still holding her face, she couldn’t look directly at him. “It’s for Lyra and Benji. We want them to have a dragon, too.”

“Can they _please_ keep it?” Elliot pleaded. “Please?!”

“Absolutely not!” Albus blurted. He turned and looked at Scorpius. Scorpius looked just as shocked as he did. “Lyra may not have a dragon!”

“But—but—!”

“No. I’m sorry, Elliot, but she cannot have a dragon,” Scorpius reiterated.

“Can _I_?!” Benji asked Nora excitedly.

“No way,” Nora told him gently.

“Aw…” he sighed.

Lyra cried out in protest. “Papa!!! I do want it! I do want a dragon! Daddy!”

Lily let go of Iris’s face. She leveled a surprisingly stern look at both the twins. They seemed to wilt a bit underneath it. After a long pause, Lily spoke, and Albus expected her to scream at them. They must’ve, too, because they seemed to steel themselves for it. But instead, she said: “You could have killed this baby dragon. It might even be hurt now from how long it’s been jostled about. Is that what you two want? To be dragon murderers?”

The twins’ eyes were wide with horror. They stared at Lily and shook their heads quickly.

“Well, you’d better hope this dragon is okay, then. You two know better…you know dragon eggs have to stay with the dragon mums. I am _so_ disappointed.”

The twins weren’t prepared for _that._ Elliot’s expression crumbled. Iris’s cheeks turned red in embarrassment. It seemed to take them a second to process what their mum said. They turned and looked at Caden, clearly expecting him to soften Lily’s words and validate their behavior, but he merely shook his head at them, his express twisted in disappointment. That seemed to do the twins in.

“Well—well—oh yeah?! Well—I don’t even _care_!” Elliot exploded. His words were defensive and angry, but his eyes were wounded and already swimming with oncoming tears. He glared at his parents through his tears. “I don’t care!! And—and I don’t even _like_ you!!”

In a dramatic storm of emotion, he snatched his arm from Caden’s touch, turned, and stormed off to the house. He slammed the door hard behind himself with surprising strength. Iris’s cheeks were bright red and she _refused_ to even look at her parents. With an almost eerie air of forced calmness, she turned slowly and walked deliberately up to the house after her distraught brother, each step almost measured in its slowness. She hadn’t exploded or yelled _I don’t like you!_ but still Albus got the feeling that she was the angriest and most offended of all.

James whistled lowly. “Not sure that was expertly handled parenting-wise, but I do see and recognize the tricky behavior problems that you two are dealing with.”

Lily shot a rude hand gesture at James in response and turned back to her dinner, though Albus noticed that she’d seemed to have lost her appetite. She picked at her food and kept shooting quick, worried looks at the house, where her kids had run off to. Caden rose after a minute or so and headed towards the house after whispering something to Lily that Albus couldn’t decipher.

Albus reached over and set a hand on Scorpius’s leg. He met his husband’s eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing: Lyra’s behavioral issues at school that morning might not have been that big of a deal after all.

* * *

 

Bedtime was one of Albus’s favorite times of the day.

It was something that he never compromised on. He was extremely lenient when it came to Scorpius missing dinners for work, but he expected everybody to be home at bedtime. He and Scorpius had a routine spanning five years now, one that was very special to Albus’s heart and had bred some of his most precious memories. Every night, they helped Lyra ready for bed, picked her outfit for the following day, read her ten books, and cuddled her until she fell asleep.

They hadn’t gone one night without the routine in _years_. But that night, everything was different.

“Okay, Lyra, time for bed,” Albus called. He stepped into the doorway of Lyra’s bedroom and looked in. She and the twins were sitting inside her duvet cover, a muggle torch lighting up the dark space, giggling nonstop about something. It was quite late; Scorpius, Albus, Lily, and Caden had decided to let them play and settle in a bit before bed (Scorpius and Albus had agreed to let Lyra miss school tomorrow due to how late dinner at the Den had run), but Albus had finally put his foot down as it neared midnight and decided that they _had_ to go to sleep. The Rowles might’ve encouraged free-spirited ideals in their own home, but in Albus and Scorpius’s, kids went to sleep at decent hours. “C’mon, you lot. Let’s go.”

“Aww!” Lyra complained. “But I’m not tired, Daddy!”

“Sure you are,” Albus countered. He glanced at his wristwatch. “You have one minute to get out of there if you want to have time for our ten books and cuddles.”

“I don’t want books or cuddles tonight. Can I just play longer? _Please_?” Lyra begged.

Albus felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It took him a second to comprehend what she’d said.

“What? Don't you want books or cuddles? We do that every night.” He tried not to sound wounded, but he wasn’t sure he did a good job.

“Tonight I want to play longer.”

The duvet rustled as Iris pushed her head through the opening. “I’m not ready for bed.”

“Me neither,” Elliot called.

Albus shrugged. “Sorry. It’s bedtime. You’ve both got to be exhausted after your long day.”

Iris looked baffled. “But how is it our bedtime if it isn’t time for bed?”

Albus arched an eyebrow. “What? Sorry?”

“It’s not time for bed ‘cause we’re not sleepy enough for bed. So it’s not bedtime,” Iris explained. She didn’t sound particularly defiant or cheeky; she really seemed confused.

“No, Iris, a ‘bedtime’ is the time that adults tell kids to go to sleep.”

“But how do you know when kids feel sleepy? You can’t be in our heads.”

“It’s just the time they have to feel sleepy because it’s time for bed,” Albus insisted.

She gave him a strange look. “But you can’t go to bed if you’re not sleepy for bed.”

“Yes, you can. You just lie there until you’re sleepy enough to go to sleep.”

Elliot popped his head out beside Iris’s. He straightened his red glasses and squinted at Albus. “Are you teasing us, Uncle Albus?”

Albus was too tired for this. “No. I’m not teasing you. In normal families, adults tell their kids when to go to bed, and kids go to bed.”

“They just lie there? And stare at the wall? Until they fall asleep?” Iris demanded. She snorted. “That’s so silly.”

“Sounds boring,” Elliot commented. “We go to sleep when we’re tired. Like normal people.”

Fearing Lyra would decide to adopt their views as her own, Albus hurried to defend the normal way of life.

“Lyra goes to sleep at the same time every night to make sure she gets enough sleep so she can be healthy. We always read ten books together. It’s our routine.”

Iris looked at him sagely. “Mummy says routines kill people’s souls.”

Albus scoffed. “And they fuel and comfort others. Lyra loves her bedtime routine. Don’t you, pumpkin?”

For a second, he thought she might lie. But her smile was genuine.

“Yeah! I love bedtime,” she attested. “But tonight, I want to play more instead.”

“You’ve played long enough. Iris, Elliot, your parents are in the sitting room. You’re welcome to stay in here and go to sleep, but if you don’t think you ‘can’ yet, go and speak with them about it.”

Scorpius stepped into the room. He’d been having a conversation with Lily and Caden and must have finally finished it. He walked over and plopped down on the bed. He prodded at Lyra’s shape inside the duvet. She laughed and crawled out of it; she was smiling as she threw herself into Scorpius’s arms. Albus’s heart felt impossibly tender as he watched Scorpius rest his cheek against their daughter’s hair and hold her.

Iris and Elliot ran off to harass their parents, leaving Scorpius, Albus, and Lyra alone. Albus straightened Lyra’s duvet while Lyra picked out her ten books. Scorpius stacked the books up on the bedside table while Lyra brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas. They crawled beneath the covers and Albus dimmed the lights with his wand.

“Book number one, here we go,” Scorpius said happily.

Albus wrapped an arm around Lyra as she leaned into his side. She had clearly been ready for bedtime long before Albus put his foot down because she only made it two books in before she fell fast asleep. Albus and Scorpius kissed her goodnight, tucked her in, and then tiptoed from her room.

“Poor girl was exhausted,” Scorpius whispered.

“I know! _And_ she was trying to convince me to let her stay up _later_!” Albus exclaimed.

They stepped back into the sitting room. The first thing Albus saw was the smoldering remains of an Exploding Snap game on the coffee table. Sitting on the plush rug around the table were the Rowles, though the twins had clearly been all talk just as Lyra had been. Iris was fast asleep on Caden’s lap, three cards still clutched in her hand, and Elliot was curled up on Lily’s lap, his cheek pressed over her heart as he snoozed.

“Lyra’s out too,” Albus greeted them. He sat down on the sofa and gestured at his cuddly niece and nephew. “So they like you two again? They’re no longer angry?”

“Eh, for now,” Lily whispered. She carefully pulled Elliot’s glasses from his face and set them on the table. “I’m sure they’ll find another reason to be angry tomorrow.”

“ _This one_ usually holds magnificent grudges,” Caden whispered, his finger pointing down at Iris. “But I think even she knows that she was wrong. And so does Elliot. They care more about the dragons than anything else—even their own pride. They didn’t realize that what they were doing was dangerous for the dragon baby. They understand now.”

“Probably best not to call your kids murderers in the future,” Albus suggested helpfully.

Lily scowled. “Why? I won’t sugarcoat life. If they steal dragon eggs, they might kill the dragons inside, and that makes them dragon murderers. They should be prepared to face the reality of the choices they make.”

“Says the girl who constantly made horrible choices her entire childhood, teenage years, and most of her young adulthood.”

“And I always faced the reality of my choices. That’s all I was telling them. You’ve got to have the guts to handle being bad, and I don’t think these two have them. They’re just a bit too sensitive deep down. I blame him.” She jabbed her thumb Caden’s way.

“Don’t let her deceive you. _She’s_ incredibly sweet with them. It’s her fault, too,” Caden shared.

 Albus had a hard time applying the word _sweet_ to his sister, but there was really no other word for the way she was looking down at Elliot as he slept. He couldn’t blame her; all their kids were really very special (bad behavior aside.)

“I’m going to bed,” Albus declared after another yawn worked its way up his throat. He studied the Rowles’ undereye circles. “You two look ready to pass out, too. The guest rooms are ready. Lily, if you wake up at an ungodly hour, _please_ don’t wake the entire house. Er, what are you going to do with the dragon egg? Where’d you put it?”

Lily pointed over at her husband. He withdrew the dragon egg from the inside of his suit jacket.

“I’m going to put it in my suitcase in an incubator. It’ll stay there until we go home,” she answered.

“It’s not going to hatch soon, right?” Scorpius checked.

“No, not for a while yet, don’t worry. It’s interesting that the twins picked Pearl’s egg. She’s one of our smallest and friendliest dragons. If I were going to pick an egg to give to somebody, it _would_ be one of hers.”

“All the kids are certainly very clever…that was _never_ in question,” Scorpius said. And he was right.

Albus waited until he and Scorpius were safely in their room to make his next comment.

“Let’s hope Lyra doesn’t tell Lily about what her teacher said about dragons. Or else Lily might march up there _with_ that dragon egg.”

He stepped out of his trousers, and a second later, he felt Scorpius’s arms wrap around his waist from behind. He smiled at the slightly ticklish sensation as Scorpius leaned in and kissed the curve of his neck.

“Did you like my letters?” his husband asked. His tone was so innocent for somebody discussing sexually explicit material.

Albus reached down and held onto Scorpius’s arms. “You know I did. And did you like mine?”

Scorpius nuzzled his face against the crook of Albus’s neck. He whispered his words into his skin between kisses. “You _know_ I did.”

Albus had been exhausted, but as he stood there with his husband, he decided there were certain things more important than sleep.

* * *

A loud crash and laughter woke Albus at four thirty that next morning. He growled into the sheets.

“One request,” Albus muttered to himself. “I gave her _one request_.”

But it seemed that the Rowles were not only strange and unconventional: they were also nocturnal. Why any family would willingly wake up before five on holiday, Albus had no idea, but _he_ did not want to wake up this early. He rolled over onto his stomach and pulled his pillow over his head, but that didn’t do much to muffle the sound of conversation. He rolled over and tucked his head beneath Scorpius’s arm, but that didn’t do much good either. Around five, after listening to the twins chatter for nearly twenty minutes straight, he decided that he might as well get up, too.

“Scorpius,” Albus mumbled. He shook Scorpius’s bare shoulder gently. “Scorpius.”

“Huh…what…?”

“I _hate_ having visitors.”

“Oh…I’m sorry…come here…” in his sleep, Scorpius reached out to comfort Albus, but when Albus moved into his opened arms, Scorpius had already fallen back asleep. Albus snorted.

He was greeted by excited hugs when he stepped into the kitchen. The twins seemed more excited to see him today than they had yesterday. Albus guessed their exhaustion had really dampened their ability to process what was happening. He hugged them both, laughed at their matching pajamas covered in tiny, cawing parrots, and then waved at Caden. He was messing with the fancy muggle coffee machine Lily always used.

“Where’s Lily?” Albus wondered. “She knows how to use that thing.”

“She went over to Hugo and Aster’s. They’re finally back from their trip,” he answered. He mashed a button and stepped back to survey what it would do. It did nothing. “Fucking hell.”

Iris looked up at Albus. “Your coffee thing is fucked up.”

Albus set a hand on her hair. “It isn’t. Your mum knows how to use it. And don’t say that word.”

Iris exchanged a look with Elliot. She leaned in close to her twin and whispered: “What’s wrong with ‘coffee’?”

Elliot shrugged.

“No, I meant—oh, nevermind,” Albus said. It was too early for this. He walked over to stand beside his brother-in-law. “Did you want coffee? Because I can make it the normal way.”

“Lily wanted coffee from this thing—I guess it tastes better than normal coffee because she’s been talking about it on and off for weeks—but she’s just going to have to grab coffee while she’s out. Why do the muggles feel the need to add _this_ many buttons to things?”

Elliot pushed his way between Albus and Caden. He looked up at his dad. “Buttons make them feel special.”

“Yeah,” Iris agreed. “‘Cause they’re probably so sad ‘cause they can’t do magic at all and we can.”

Caden paused what he was doing and looked down at his kids. He smiled at them, amused. “You know, you two may be right.”

“We _are_ right,” Elliot declared. “Uncle Albus, can I go wake Lyra up?”

“No, definitely not,” Albus said hurriedly. “Lyra’s not her best self when she’s woken early.”

“Awww,” Iris lamented. She bowed over sadly and rested her face in her hands. “I miss her.”

“You’ll see her as soon as she wakes,” Albus reassured her. He reached out and patted at her wild hair, trying to tame all the knots and frizzy spots she’d gotten from sleeping on it. “Do you like plaits, Iris? Would you like me to plait your hair while we wait for Lyra?”

Iris perked up. “I do like plaits! I like the plait you put in my hair last time you were at my house! It was like _this_ and like _this_ ,” Iris made a vague, twirling hand gesture. Albus thankfully remembered exactly the plait she was talking about.

“Okay, let’s go sit at the table and let your dad fight with the machine.”

“Okay!!” Iris hopped like a bunny rabbit over to the table. Elliot—his hair definitely too short to do much but comb it—climbed up onto the counter to sit beside the coffee machine and ‘help’ Caden.

Albus summoned Lyra’s bottle of Detangler Potion and a comb. He turned Iris’s chair and stood behind it. He squirted the potion at a particularly knotted patch of hair, brought the comb to it, and pulled through the resistance. Iris shot out of the seat like he’d burned her.

“Ow!!! Bloody _hell_!!” she cried. She turned and looked at him with wide, alarmed eyes. She gathered her long hair in her hands protectively.

“Sorry,” Albus said quickly. “You’ve got quite a few tricky spots. Come sit.”

“No way!! That hurt!”

“Oh, okay, I didn’t realize you were a big baby,” Albus said apologetically. He set the comb down on the table. “I guess Lyra’s braver than you are.”

Iris was affronted. “She’s not! She is not! I am _not_ a big baby! But Mummy says you treat hair with _love_ , and that did _not_ feel like love!”

“Well, how does Mummy get tangles out of your hair?” Albus demanded. With hair that went halfway down her back and a wild lifestyle, there was no way Iris didn’t spend at least half her day having her hair attacked with a comb. Part of the reason they’d had Lyra’s hair cut to her shoulders was to minimize the early morning hair-combing trauma before school.

“With _love_ ,” Iris repeated. “She doesn’t do like _this_ with the comb—” Iris made a chopping motion in the air with her hand—“she does like _this_ ,” Iris slowly stroked her hand through the air as if drawing a comb nicely through hair.

Albus doubted that. “Okay, I’ll try it that way. Come and sit again.”

Iris reluctantly walked back over to sit in front of Albus. From his spot on the counter, Elliot began commentating Caden’s struggle with the coffee maker, his voice deepened hilariously as if he were a news reporter.

“Man against machine…Caden Rowle is a grown up and this machine is zero years old because it is a machine…who is going to win? Caden has a wand and a brain and this machine only has loads of little buttons…but those buttons might be better than a wand and a brain ‘cause my dad is not winning _at all_ —”

“You think you’re funny, do you?” Caden asked. When Albus glanced back, Elliot was holding a serving spoon up and speaking into it. He lowered it down after Caden spoke.

“Please don’t talk at the radio ‘cause the radio cannot hear you,” he told his dad seriously. He lifted the spoon and resumed his commentary.

Iris finally returned to the seat. “Okay, let’s try this again,” Albus said. He wet the patches of tangles with potion until it was nearly entirely wet and then very carefully pulled bit by bit at the tangles. He let out a relieved breath when the comb sailed right through them. “Much better.”

“See?” Iris told him happily. She turned around and looked at him. “With love.”

And, well. He sort of saw her point. But he would never admit that aloud.

* * *

 

Lyra was overjoyed to find the Rowles still there come morning. She stumbled from her bedroom in her nightie, her hair wild like Iris’s had been, and began jumping in place at the sight of them.

“Yay!!” she celebrated. She ran across the kitchen and threw her arms around Caden’s waist. “You didn’t leave!!”

“We’ll be here for another two weeks,” Caden reassured her. He returned her hug. “The twins are outside with Lily if you want to join them.”

“Nuh-uh!” Albus quickly said as Lyra made to bolt for the door. Scorpius reached out and gently caught Lyra’s elbow. “Breakfast first! And those are not play clothes.”

Lyra groaned. “But I want to go _play_!”

“And you will. After breakfast,” Albus assured her.

Lyra stamped her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth, slammed her wardrobe shut after she changed into her play clothes, and stamped with her arms crossed over her chest into the kitchen. All the adults were quite used to it and remained unfazed.

“I’m not hungry,” Lyra whined. She threw herself down in her seat at the table and kicked her legs out angrily. “I want to go play!”

“Iris and Elliot will be here all day long,” Caden reminded her. “They’ll be there to play with you when you’re done eating.”

Scorpius sat down beside Lyra. “I’ve been waiting all morning for you to wake up so we could eat breakfast together. Won’t you sit and have breakfast with me?”

Lyra wanted very much to continue complaining. But after looking at her Papa’s gentle, imploring eyes, she sighed.

“ _Fine_. But I’m eating _fast_!”

“Quickly. You’re eating quickly,” Scorpius corrected cheerfully.

“I’m eating very _quickly_ ,” Lyra repeated.

And she did. Albus set their plates down in front of them, and by the time he’d put the kettle on for himself and turned back around, Lyra’s plate was empty. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shot out of her seat.

“Put shoes on!! Lyra, put shoes on!” Scorpius called hurriedly after her. She was already in the mud room.

“But Iris and Elliot don’t have shoes on!!” Lyra complained, her voice echoing from the other room.

Albus didn’t want to insult Caden’s parenting right in front of him, but he also wasn’t okay with his daughter deciding that she was going to live the way the twins did.

“Well in _our house_ , you wear shoes when you go outside in October. Go on, go put them on.”

Albus walked over and stood in the mud room doorway with his arms crossed, watching to make sure that Lyra put her shoes on and laced them up. Once her feet were protected, she ran full speed from the house. Lily was climbing a tree with the twins, but she jumped down after Lyra approached to help her reach the lowest branch so she could climb up, too, and then she rejoined them.

Albus returned to the kitchen where Scorpius seemed preoccupied with the twins’ feet.

“I mean, it’s fairly chilly, and I’m sure the grass had dew on it, so I’m not sure it’s safe for their little toes to be out in that,” he was saying.

Caden wasn’t concerned. “The twins’ feet are so calloused that I doubt they even feel the cold. They ‘can’t climb trees’ with shoes on, and they’re used to running around the beach barefoot, so it doesn’t bother them.”

“…Okay,” Scorpius finally said uneasily.

“Some battles just aren’t worth it. We try not to stress the small things.”

Scorpius clearly didn’t consider the twins’ toes remaining intact a ‘small thing’, but he was far too polite to push the conversation any further.

Albus finished making his tea, grabbed his mug, and lightly patted Scorpius’s bum as he passed him.

“Let’s go outside and watch Lyra channel her inner monkey.”

“I don’t think this is going to end well,” Scorpius worried. They didn’t usually let Lyra climb the giant oak due to its massive height, but Scorpius clearly didn’t want to be the one to keep Lyra from playing with her cousins, and Albus didn’t want to, either.

* * *

 

It didn’t end well.

“OW!!!! YOU FUCKING TREE!! YOU FUCKING FUCK TREE!!! OW!!”

“Fucking fuck tree?” Lily repeated to her husband. Caden’s lips twitched briefly. Had their child not been lying on the ground in excruciating pain, Caden would have probably laughed.

“Okay, hold still, it’s okay…” Scorpius soothed. Elliot was lying on the ground where he’d fallen, his hands closed around an obvious fracture in his leg. Iris was standing off to the side watching with wide eyes, her own hands closed around that same leg, as if hers hurt, too.

“I want down!” Lyra called fearfully. She was still up in the tree. After Elliot had fallen, Lily had jumped down to check on him, and Iris had jumped down to do the same, but Lyra wasn’t as practiced with heights and had been too afraid to make the leap alone. Scorpius had sprinted over to attend to Elliot’s leg, Caden had joined Lily at Elliot’s side, and Albus had been sent into the house to get Scorpius’s wand so he could mend the break. Now that he was back, he ran over to give Scorpius his wand, and then went over to the trunk of the tree. Lyra reached for him tearfully. Albus caught her and lowered her down to the ground. She ran over to Elliot’s side at once.

“Okay, this won’t hurt—”

“No!! No!” Elliot shrieked. He folded his upper body over so he was lying atop his broken leg, shielding it. “No, don’t touch it!”

“He’s not going to touch it, El, he’s just going to fix it with magic,” Caden said.

“NOOOOO!”

“Elliot, stop it,” Lily snapped. Her son’s pain seemed to have worn her already limited patience down. “He’s a Healer! He’s got to fix it!”

Lily reached out and grabbed Elliot’s arms to hold him in place. He squirmed and smacked at her hands.

“NO! IT’S GONNA HURT!”

Lily refused to give up the fight. “It _already_ hurts! He’s going to make the pain go away! Hold still!”

“NOOOOOO!” he wailed.

“Elliot, you stop this,” Caden said quietly, his voice calm but commanding. “Your uncle’s going to wave his wand, fix your leg, and then it won’t hurt at all anymore. He’s _not_ going to touch it. Okay?”

“H-HE’S GONNA! HE IS!”

“No, he’s not! I promise. I won’t let anybody touch your leg. But you need to sit up and calm down. Now.”

Elliot was so hysterical that he couldn’t even inhale fully. He choked around his sobs and wheezed. “I-I-I W-WANT M-MUMMY!”

Lily stared at Elliot incredulously. “You’ve lost your mind! I’m literally right behind you!”

He continued crying heavily. Lily shifted closer and set her palm back on his back. She rubbed over his spine as he cried, but he was still so upset that there was no talking sense into him. He tried to turn to crawl into Lily’s lap, but he collapsed back against her with a howl of pain. Before Scorpius could quickly do the spell, he’d doubled back over to lie on top of his leg again.

“Move, move, _move_!” Iris demanded. She stamped through the grass and walked over to Elliot. She kneeled down beside him and poked his shoulder. “Elliot, you are embarrassing us! Get it together!”

“IT HURTS!”

“It’s gonna hurt more because I’m gonna kick it if you don’t let Uncle Scorpius fix it!”

“YOU AREN’T! I’LL KICK YOU IF YOU KICK ME!” Elliot screamed.

“THEN I’LL KICK YOU BACK IF YOU KICK ME IF I KICK YOU!”

“THEN I’LL KICK YOU HARDER IF YOU KICK ME IF I KICK YOU IF YOU—” he broke off and inhaled deeply, having talked so long he was out of breath. He gave another sad sounding sob and gave up the fight.

Albus felt Lyra lean against his side. When he glanced down at her, she was watching the scene with a heavily concerned expression. Iris sat on the ground beside her brother and poked over and over and over again at his shoulder, clearly trying to annoy him enough to make him sit up, but he determinately ignored her.

“Come _on!_ You’re making my leg hurt _too_!” Iris whined.

Albus felt Lyra take a step forward. He looked down at her to see what she was doing. She sucked in a deep breath and then yelled: “ELLIOT, WATCH THIS!”

Her excited tone got the little boy’s attention. He sat up and turned towards her to see what she was showing him, and as soon as he’d sat up, Scorpius aimed his wand at his leg and murmured the mending spell. Elliot hardly even noticed when the spell had been done.

“What? Watch what?” Elliot demanded, confused. There was a short pause. His eyes widened. He turned and looked down at his leg. “My leg!! It doesn’t hurt!”

“That’s because your uncle fixed it. Like we said he would,” Lily said.

Elliot’s mouth formed a tiny _O_ of surprise. He looked at Scorpius. “You fixed it already?”

Scorpius was no stranger to dealing with difficult children and didn’t seem annoyed by the fuss Elliot had caused. He smiled. “Yep!”

“When?!”

“When you were looking at Lyra.”

Elliot blinked. “That fast?!”

“That quickly, yes.”

“Wow!!” Elliot said. He stretched his leg experimentally. The adults watched on as he jumped to his feet and ran a quick circle around them. “Wow! It’s even _faster_ now!!” He threw his arms around Scorpius and hugged him tightly. “Thanks, Uncle Scorpius!”

Then—as if nothing had ever happened—he turned and began climbing the tree again, his tears still damp on his face.

“Beat you to the top, Iris!!” Elliot exclaimed.

“Not likely,” Iris shot back.

“That kid is a Gryffindor,” Albus muttered to Caden, his eyes on his nephew as he bravely ascended the tree once more. 

“Oh, trust me. I know,” Caden assured Albus. “Whereas _that one_ …” they both turned and watched on as Iris stood at the trunk of the tree and stared up with a calculating expression, clearly trying to decide the best route to use to make it to the top first. Her eyes darted from branch to branch. Then, right as Elliot was about to reach the top, she jumped straight up, grabbed a low branch, and jumped up and down wildly, so that the tree shook a bit. Elliot shrieked, collapsed down onto the branch, and gripped it like a sloth, alarmed. In the time it took him to regain balance, Iris had scaled nearly half the tree.

Caden looked at Albus. “Yeah.”

Albus nodded. “Yeah.”

“C’mon Lyra!!” Iris encouraged. “Climb up!!”

Lyra stood at the trunk. She considered their invitation and then shook her head. “No thanks. Want to go play Quidditch?”

The twins began cascading down the tree at once. “Yeah!!”

“I’m seeker!!” Elliot yelled.

“I’m keeper!” Lyra exclaimed.

“I’m chaser!” Iris said. She jumped from the tree and landed on her bare feet. “Uncle Albus, can we use real brooms?!”

He and Scorpius had just begun training Lyra on a real broom versus a training one, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to put all three in the air on actual brooms.

“No, just training for today,” he said. “But they’re level three training brooms so they go fairly fast.”

“Oh, _okay_ ,” Iris and Elliot sighed together.

“Daddy, can Benji and Dahlia come over, too?!” Lyra asked. “Then we’ll have five players and we can just play without beaters!”

Albus glanced at Scorpius. Scorpius shrugged. He glanced at Lily and Caden. They nodded.

“Sure, I’ll go Floo and ask,” Albus said. He paused before walking inside and set a brief hand atop Lyra’s head. “Be careful.”

She nodded.

* * *

 

Hugo and Aster’s daughter Dahlia was nearly a year younger than Lyra, Benji, and the twins and had every appearance of a dainty fairy, but she made up for that with sheer grit.

The kids’ Quidditch match went from cute, family fun to sheer terror within ten minutes of Dahlia and Benji’s arrival. Before Albus knew what’d happened, their fun, good-spirited game turned lethal, with Iris, Elliot, and Dahlia jumping mid-air from broom to broom, wrestling the Quaffle from the air, and taking turns diving from their brooms onto the soft grass only a foot or so below them. When Benji fell from the back of Lyra’s broom—having been by accident as Elliot and Dahlia took turns jumping back and forth between each other’s brooms—Albus ended the game.

“Stop! Stop—that’s it! The end!”

“What?! But we were _winning_!” Iris exclaimed, furious.

“The other team is imaginary, Iris, of course you were winning,” Albus reasoned.

“Why are you stopping them, Al?” Lily demanded. She had been sitting beneath that same oak tree Elliot had fallen from, a drink in her and Caden’s hands. She rose and walked over to Albus. “They’re having fun!”

“Benji nearly died!”

“He did not! Benji, you’re all right, aren’t you?” Lily asked.

Benji grinned. As soon as he smiled, blood poured out of his mouth.

“Oh, Merlin!” Albus cried. “Benji!”

Benji touched the blood on his chin and then quickly covered his mouth with his palm. “I got hit,” he muttered from behind his hand.

“In the mouth?! Why didn’t you say something? Scorpius! SCORPIUS!”

“Oh, it’s not that bad, you wimp,” Lily muttered to Albus. She walked over and stood in front of Benji and Lyra’s broom. “Open.” Benji opened his mouth at once. Lily tipped his chin back and squinted into his mouth. “He’s just got a tooth knocked out.”

Albus groaned. “It’s actually knocked out?! Where is it?! That’s his first missing tooth, Lily! James and Nora are going to _kill us_.”

“Why? It was just an accident. He’s okay. Aren’t you, Benji?”

Benji nodded at once. “S’okay!”

“Good lad!” Lily patted his shoulder. “Want to keep playing?”

“Yeah!”

“No, no, no! Absolutely _not_!” Albus said. He was beginning to feel very uneasy. “We’ve already had one broken leg and a knocked out tooth today; let’s call it quits and go into the house before another kid gets injured!” _Like my Lyra._

Lily looked at Albus in disbelief. “So? That’s not even that bad. Talk to me when we’ve had one head busted open, two broken bones, and a near amputation.”

Albus’s frustration crested. He buried his face in his hands. “Lulu. You might see your kids as these indestructible, replaceable _things_ , but my daughter is my _daughter_. She’s the most precious thing on the planet to me. She’s little and vulnerable and absolutely priceless. And I will _not_ gamble with her safety.”

He had offended her. But what was new?

“I do _not_ see my children as ‘replaceable things’!” Lily exclaimed. Her cheeks were turning red with anger. “I see them as _people_. People who deserve to have fun and have agency over their own lives. They’ve been climbing trees and playing Quidditch on training brooms, Albus, not jumping off trains or using illegal time turners.”

“But you’re the parent, Lily. You are supposed to draw the line between fun and danger, and as far as I can tell, you don’t think there _is_ a line.”

“Oh, there is a line. Let me show you. Right now, arguing with you, that’s sort of fun. And when I step over this line and punch you in the face, that’s danger.”

“Grow up, Lily.”

“I’ll grow up when you lighten up.”

“Ohhh myyy _Godddd_!” Iris cried. Albus and Lily automatically turned around to look at her. “You two need to count to ten and walk away. Walk away, Mummy—just walk away.”

Something about her calm yet vaguely annoyed tone reminded Albus of Caden. Her brow was furrowed in a nearly identical way, too. Albus felt the urge to laugh overcome his annoyance.

He and his sister might’ve kept arguing despite Iris’s interruption—they were rather good at fighting, after all—but luckily, their husbands returned at that moment.

“Daddy, Mummy and Uncle Albus are fighting!” Elliot tattled.

“They are, are they? About what?” Caden asked.

Albus and Lily both rushed to speak first.

“Lily’s being reckless with your children’s lives—”

“Albus is a wet blanket and keeps ruining the kids’ fun!”

Albus turned to Lily and glowered. “ _They keep getting injured!”_

_“They’re fine!”_

“Okay, look, that’s enough,” Caden said. Iris had flown her broom over to hover beside him; she nodded along in agreement. “Albus, Lily and I will worry about the twins, and Lily, Albus and Scorpius will worry about Lyra. That’s that. It really is that simple. Just let it go.”

“Right. Just _let it go_ ,” Iris echoed.

There was a pause, and then Scorpius exclaimed: “What happened to your mouth, Benji?!”

“Exactly!” Albus cried.

Scorpius mended Benji’s mouth and then Albus ordered both him and Lyra back to the house. Lyra was not happy about it.

“I was having _fun_!” she complained.

Benji kept running his tongue over the spot his tooth had been. “I miss my tooth.”

Albus decided to take Benji home now and face whatever anger the Potters would dish out rather than keep him here and risk further injury. He left Lyra with Scorpius, Flooed Benji back to his house, and apologized to Nora. Luckily, Benji was a good sport about the injury, which greatly colored the way his parents reacted.

“Things happen,” Nora said gently. She smiled at Albus; his guilt melted away. “He’s okay, aren’t you, Benji?”

Benji nodded at once.

“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for inviting him over.”

When Albus returned home, Lyra was still pouting. Scorpius was trying to cheer her up with a game of Chess, but she was refusing to play.

“Knight to…Lyra, I’m going to beat you,” Scorpius warned her.

She shrugged and glared at her feet. Albus walked over and sat down beside her. She refused to look at him, too.

“Don’t be angry with us. We just want you to be safe,” Albus told her.

She turned her body to the side so that her back was to Albus. His heart ached.

“Lyra,” Scorpius said softly. “That’s not very nice.”

She crossed her arms. Albus could tell she was looking out the window right across from her and was watching as Elliot and Iris tried to get the Quaffle past Dahlia.

“It isn’t fair.”

Albus was beginning to doubt his own decision. He looked over at Scorpius for help. Scorpius looked equally conflicted.

“We just want to keep you safe,” Scorpius said, repeating Albus’s early words. But Lyra wasn’t talking about that anymore.

“It’s not fair that I don’t have a brother or sister.”

She sounded terribly sad. Albus felt his heart plummet right to his toes. He turned and looked at Scorpius again. Scorpius’s lips had parted in surprise.

“Oh.”

Albus opened and closed his mouth a few times, each sentence he came up with equally insufficient.

“That just never happened, pumpkin,” Scorpius finally said. “You’re our only child.”

“But why?” she wanted to know. “Why can’t I have a brother or a sister?”

“Because. Because Daddy and I…we…it was very difficult to even have you, darling. You’re our miracle,” Scorpius said.

Lyra sniffed. Albus wondered if she was crying. Without being able to see her face, he wasn’t certain. “If you had me you can just have another. Auntie Nora and Uncle Jamie have more kids _all the time_.”

“Yes, well, it’s a bit simpler for them than it is for us,” Albus said.

“Why?”

“Because…because…” and in that moment, Albus realized Lyra had no idea of the journey her parents had gone on to have her. She had no idea that she wasn’t biologically his baby. She had no idea the role that her aunts had played in her creation. And he didn’t feel like this was the right time to tell her, either. He knew there was only one thing that would get her mind off this topic now. With some trepidation, he said: “Hey, how would you like to go back out to finish your game?”

Lyra shot off the seat. She turned and looked at Albus. “Really?!”

“Really. Just please— _please—_ be careful.”

Scorpius waited until Lyra had shut the door behind her.

“I thought you weren’t comfortable with her playing Quidditch right now?” he asked.

Albus found it difficult to look into Scorpius’s eyes. He wasn’t sure why.

“I find it more uncomfortable to talk to her about babies,” he said gruffly. He stood. “I’m going to go start dinner. Will you go out and watch over her?”

“Sure,” Scorpius agreed. He stood and set a hand on Albus’s arm, stopping him in place. “Are you all right?”

Albus shrugged. He had a lot of insecurity weighing on his heart that he didn’t want to talk about. The truth was that he was afraid to tell Lyra where she’d come from, afraid that she’d somehow decide that he wasn’t her dad or that she’d feel weird or unloved or…

“I just don’t really want to talk about it.”

“About having babies?”

“About Lyra not being mine.”

Scorpius was quiet. His hand tightened a bit on Albus’s arm. “Albus, she is yours.”

He didn’t say anything. Scorpius continued.

“It makes me really upset when you say things like that. She _is_ yours. She’s as much yours as she is mine.”

But _was she_? Of course he felt like she was. He loved her more than he’d ever loved anything—would ever love anything. And he knew she loved him, too. But in the end, she was still more Scorpius’s than his in certain ways. It very rarely bothered him. The only reason it did at all was because he was so worried that it would bother _Lyra_. He was so afraid of how that information would impact their bond. He was so worried about how it would impact _Lyra._

“We don’t have to tell her anytime soon if that’s what you’re worried about,” Scorpius said. “But she’s not going to care. I promise, Albus. It won’t change the way she feels about you. You’re her dad. You’ll always be her dad.”

Selfishly, he didn’t want to _ever_ tell her. But he knew that wasn’t the right answer.

“Will you go keep an eye on her?” he asked Scorpius.

“Of course. Hey.”

Albus turned and glanced at Scorpius. Scorpius closed the distance between them and reached for Albus’s face. Albus leaned into his touch.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” Scorpius ordered. He leaned in. His lips pressed against Albus’s, warm and sweet and comforting. “You need to be kind to yourself.” He dropped one of his hands from Albus’s cheek and placed it over his heart. “You’re already making your heart act up again.”

Albus hardly noticed it anymore. Scorpius leaned in and kissed him again; this time, it was so deep that Albus’s thoughts scattered.

“Is it safe to leave you alone with your thoughts?” Scorpius asked.

“Probably?”

“Then that’s a no. So you can come outside with me and we’ll order something for dinner,” Scorpius decided.

It was the right call. Albus and Scorpius joined the Rowle parents on a blanket beneath the tree and watched as the twins, Lyra, and Dahlia played Quidditch, and after an hour passed with no serious injuries, Albus relaxed a bit. Aster and Hugo brought dinner over and they ate together in the garden, joined later by Rose and Iset. They all sat around the fire with butterbeer and hot chocolate afterwards, but their company didn’t stay very long because they had work and school tomorrow.

Around seven thirty that evening, after everybody had left, Iris declared: “It’s my bedtime.”

Lyra looked quickly at Scorpius and Albus. “It’s not mine, is it?!”

Albus checked his wristwatch. “Not quite.” He glanced at Iris. “This is early for a girl who chooses her own bedtime.”

“I’m tired now,” she yawned. She walked over and tugged at her parents’ hands. “C’mon.”

“It’s not _our_ bedtime,” her mum teased. She crashed into Caden’s side. “We’re staying up late.”

Iris tugged harder on their hands. “I’m scared without you.”

“You’re a big baby now? Did you hear that, Caden? We’re raising a big baby.”

Iris glowered spectacularly at them. Caden reached out and pulled her into his lap; her pouting glower melted as he kissed her cheek.

“We’re coming. Run along and we’ll be there in a moment,” he promised her. She smiled.

Elliot hadn’t said that he was going to bed, but when Iris headed back towards the guest room, he followed, yawning nearly as often as Iris was. Lily and Caden wished Lyra a goodnight and headed back towards the guest room. Lyra seemed very flattered to find herself the last kid awake.

“What should we do before bed? What’s our last hurrah?” Scorpius asked.

Lyra considered the question very, very carefully. Her face brightened as she settled on an idea. “I want to go to the library!!”

Albus smiled. Scorpius’s eyes lit up, too. “The library! I’m afraid the muggle library is closed right now. Or do you mean ours?”

“Ours!! And I want to pick whatever book I want! And I want you to read it to me!”

Scorpius’s library was massive. They’d purchased a home with two levels, but they only lived on the first; the entire top level was the aforementioned library. Scorpius had hung bookshelves on all the corridors walls, the walls in each room had been turned into giant shelves, and each room had its own category with each book meticulously alphabetized within that room. Lyra _adored it_. She had her own mini-library within her bedroom, but if she had her way, she would’ve spent every minute of every day upstairs. They tried to limit her time there so that it was extra special anytime they let her go up there.

“I think you’ve got the _best_ ideas, Lyra,” Scorpius said affectionately. She grinned.

* * *

Albus went to tidy the kitchen up from dinner while Scorpius helped Lyra peruse the library. On his way back to the stairs, he passed by the guest room the twins were staying in, and he couldn’t help but peek in to see if they were indeed asleep so early. He pushed the cracked door open slowly and stuck his head in. He had partially expected to find the twins feigning sleep in preparation for some late-night sneaking about, but instead, he saw a rather impressive blanket fort built above and around the bed. And inside of it, the Rowles looked almost uncharacteristically tranquil and sweet. Iris was sleeping on Caden’s chest as he stroked her hair and Elliot was curled up in Lily’s arms. Both parents glanced up as Albus peeked in.

“Just checking in,” he said, after a short pause. “Everything okay?”

“No. We’re in terrible trouble. We’re burning alive,” Lily said.

“Ha, ha,” Albus muttered. He rolled his eyes. “We’re about to put Lyra to bed. See you in a bit.”

“See you,” Caden said.

The parents looked back at their children, and as Albus stepped out, he realized he probably owed Lily an apology for accusing her of not cherishing her children. It was clear to him then from the tender way she was looking at them that she did, maybe even as much as he cherished his.

* * *

 

“I’m…sorry,” Albus said. He walked over and sat beside Lily on the sofa. She looked up from her coffee and arched an eyebrow.

“Sorry? What’d you do this time?”

He sighed heavily. “No. For earlier, I mean. For what I said about your kids.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “You said something about _my kids_?!”

He hurriedly clarified before she punched him. “No! Earlier, outside, when I said you didn’t care if they got hurt or saw them as replaceable.”

She relaxed back against the sofa. “Oh. That.”

“I’m sorry. It was wrong. I know that you love them.”

It took her longer than it typically did to respond. Caden was tactfully pretending to read the _Prophet_ in his hands, but Albus was certain he was listening to every word.

“I don’t just love them. I fucking _adore_ them,” Lily admitted finally. “And I _don’t_ see them as replaceable. I see them as tough. I think that’s where we’re misunderstanding each other.”

“‘Misunderstanding’,” Albus repeated thoughtfully. “That’s a very…mature word. Did you steal that from his vocabulary?” He jabbed his thumb towards Caden.

Lily shrugged. “I guess so.”

Albus thought about that. “I guess I don’t see Lyra as ‘tough’. I see her as my baby.”

“And I see my kids as incredibly brave and resilient. And I trust in that strength. They’ve been through a lot even if they don’t look it. They may look sweet and angelic—I know that they do, I _know it,_ they’re deceptively adorable—but they’ve been camping during an earthquake, and they’ve seen dragons that they love dearly die right in front of them, and they’ve broken just about any bone you can imagine at least once. They’re strong—stronger than I could even give them credit for, stronger than most adults. They’re mine. They’re _people_. Little people, yes, but people, and _my people_ are fierce and I trust them. My kids can handle anything. And the things they can’t handle, their dad and I help them handle. Caden and I protect them from the big things, but we know we can’t protect them from _everything—_ even if we wish we could—and we believe that they can handle the little things that slip past our control. I don’t worry about it.”

“And it’s _all_ I worry about,” Albus realized quietly. He shook his head. “I lie awake at night imagining and dreading all the horrible things that could happen to my Lyra the next day. I fret over every cough and every skinned knee. I can’t stand to see her upset or in pain—it’s torturous. She’s just…she’s my baby. She’s not a baby anymore, I know, but in so many ways, she _is_. I can’t help but feel like she needs me, like Scorpius and I are the only things protecting her from the world, the only things standing in between her and all the horrible things out there, and I want to keep on protecting her every minute of every day.”

Lily nodded. “I get that. I know the exact emotion you’re talking about. It’s just different, I guess. Our families are different. And we say ‘I love you’ in different ways. But Caden’s right, you know.”

Caden lowered the _Prophet_. “Sorry, what was that I just heard? ‘Caden’s right?’”

“Caden’s a twat, but Caden was right,” Lily continued. “The twins are mine. I’ll worry about them. You worry about Lyra. I don’t mean to impose the twins’ lifestyle on her. I wouldn’t ever want somebody to try and tell me how to raise my kids, so I get it. You keep Lyra following your rules; I’ll keep the twins following mine. We’ll just explain to them that different families do different things.”

“Deal,” Albus agreed. And then, because it was so odd to have such an amicable conversation with Lily over something so emotionally tricky, he added for good measure: “Though not arguing or judging each other is probably going to be quite the learning curve for us.”

“You’re not kidding,” Lily snorted. She took a sip of her coffee. “Judging you just comes so naturally to me. It’s a gift, really.”

Albus knew deep down that some of his overprotective tendencies probably tied into his paternal insecurity, but he was unwilling to confront either issue for the time being. Despite his concerns, he was happier now—with his husband and his daughter—than he had ever been at any other point in his life. He was happier now and more fulfilled than he’d ever dreamed he could be. And it was only natural that he feared losing that state of happiness and equilibrium (especially when they were times in his life when he’d been terribly _un_ happy.)

“It was big of you to apologize,” Scorpius told him later that night. They were tucked into bed, happily preparing to sink into dreams after a long day. “Isn’t that better than you two having a duel like you did that one time?”  

“Yes, well, I still think she and Caden are a bit reckless with their kids.”

Scorpius nodded. “I _do_ have to question the free-range nature of their parenting philosophy.”

“ _But_ the twins do seem happy and relatively well-adjusted…all things considered. I mean, Lily’s their mum, so I can’t hope for miracles. And our Lyra is brilliant, happy, and absolutely well-adjusted. So maybe both ways work just fine, though I still stand by my belief that our way is best.”

* * *

 

He was called into work earlier than usual that morning, and because of that, he wasn’t able to help Lyra get ready for school. It was unusual for Albus to be the one called in earlier; typically it was Scorpius who received last-minute work calls.

Nearly the entire Auror department was standing around in a huddle in the atrium when he arrived. He made his way over to them, confused and exhausted. He’d only barely had time to roll out of bed and throw his robes on. He stood beside a colleague and muffled a yawn behind his hand.

“What’s this about?” demanded Albus.

His colleague shrugged. “I dunno, but I was in the middle of a really nice dream when that damn owl came knocking at my bedroom window.”

Albus couldn’t remember his dreams, but he’d been snuggled up perfectly with his husband, and _that_ was something he was reluctant to give up earlier than he had to.

Another colleague standing nearby turned to face them and join the conversation. “I heard it’s about the Free Magics. There was word last night that they were staging something at Picadilly Circus…a giant ‘reveal’ on magic or something. As soon as everybody is here, they’re going to brief us and send us off.”

Albus snorted. “So? Let the Free Magics stand on a soapbox and scream that magic is real…nobody will even look twice at them. The muggles will assume they’re nutters.”

“No,” somebody else said. They turned and joined the conversation, too. “Didn’t you lot hear?”

Albus glanced to the right. His colleague, Nina, gave him an equally baffled look.

“Hear _what_?” Nina asked.

“The Free Magics robbed Ollivanders last night. They took about a thousand wands. We think they’re planning on giving them out today.”

A hush fell over their group.

“Well, they can’t do anything with them, can they?” Albus finally said uneasily. “Wands just…direct magic. Magic is just…inside of you. If it were just the wands, Squibs wouldn’t exist. So they’ll just be waving nicely-made sticks around.”

“There have been instances of muggles causing violent and accidental things after getting their hands on wands,” Nina said nervously.

“No way,” somebody else argued. “Like Potter said—if just anybody could pick up a wand and make things happen, Squibs wouldn’t even be an issue. Have _you_ ever seen a Squib trying to do magic?”

“Yes, I have,” Nina said defensively. “My little cousin is a Squib. And I will tell you that she _can_ make _some_ things happen when she picks up a wand. She just can’t control it at all. It’s random bursts and such. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want thousands of muggles running lose making ‘random bursts’ happen with _our_ wands!”

“But Squibs have _some_ magic in them,” Albus pointed out. “Because they’ve got magical family members. Muggles without magical blood—”

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn’t have at least a drop of magical blood in them from somewhere down the line of their lineage.”

“So what? You’re telling me that these muggles can get our wands and just go mad on the streets with them?” demanded Albus. He shook his head, though his uneasiness was growing. “I don’t think so.”

“Whether or not you believe it isn’t the issue. No matter what they can or _can’t_ do with them, it’s a massive breach of the Statue of Secrecy. We can’t have wizards preforming magic in front of muggles. We can’t have muggles with wands. We’re going to have to address the Free Magics better…I’m _tired_ of chasing after them,” Nina said. And she would be. She was one of the many assigned to policing the Free Magics, a rather volatile group of witches, wizards, and squibs alike who believed it was the Wizarding World’s moral duty to share magic with _everyone_. They had organized themselves particularly well in a very short span of time, encouraged and fueled by all the recent social issues with squibs. They cited all the sufferings in the muggle world that would be alleviated—if not completely eliminated—by magic and preached that wizardkind _must_ open their world up to everyone in any way that they could. It had created quite a headache for both the Auror Department and James’s department because they had only _just_ gotten most every prejudiced wizard on board with the new squib inclusion plans…and now there was a fringe group preaching the exact thing that prejudiced wizards had feared for so many years (that muggles should know about magic, that muggles should get to _have_ magic.)

And it got more complicated still with all the research being done within the Department of Mysteries. Now that lime pox had a vaccine in the works and its spread had been stopped, many geneticists were working on ways to transfer magical ability _back_ to those squib babies born without it. The general population was not supposed to know about this, so of course most everybody did. It was raising more and more ethical questions: where do we draw the line with genetic tampering? At what point do we leave nature alone? And for the Free Magics it raised further questions still: Why should squibs be given magic when muggles aren’t? If we prioritize “helping” squibs just because of who their parents are, isn’t that eugenics? Isn’t that morally _wrong_? Aren’t we all humans?

To Albus, the matter was quite simple: some people were witches and wizards and some people weren’t, and that’s the way it’d always been, and that’s the way it should stay.

But their society was changing rapidly. They had always known that the lime pox crisis would do that. Albus just hadn’t realized how much of a spark it had been until everything was aflame.

* * *

 

Two-thirds of the department was deployed to the site where the Free Magics were organizing while the remaining third were sent to Ollivanders to get descriptions on what had been stolen. Albus—having requested long ago to never be sent out on field assignments—was sent to Ollivanders. He and his colleagues spent two hours taking painfully detailed notes on every wand that had been taken. Albus missed getting Lyra ready for school and he missed dropping her off. He hadn’t missed either of those since she’d started school. At the back of his mind all morning, he worried about her.

Finally, nearing lunchtime, they reached the last ransacked row of wands. Albus recorded the details of every missing wand from the empty and crushed boxes as quickly as possible, sent his paperwork to the office directly via owl, and then apparated to Lyra’s school, figuring he could take his lunch break there with her. Parents were allowed to have lunch with their kids whenever they felt like it.

He checked his wand in with the witch at the front, put on the metal name tag that he got in exchange for turning in his wand, and then made his way to the dining hall. Lyra’s year sat at the smallest table due to its pitiful size. Even at that small, round table, there was an open seat between Lyra and another student. Albus spotted Lyra chatting quite happily with a friend and felt his concern evaporate. He walked over and sat down beside her with a smile in place. Lyra sensed somebody joining at the table, turned to glance his way, and then did a double-take. A massive grin brightened her face. She gave a little muffed exclamation of excitement into her juice, slammed her drink down on the table, and hurled herself into Albus’s already-opened arms. He felt affection overwhelm his heart as he hugged her back.

“Daddy!! I didn’t know you were coming here for lunch! I didn’t know!!” Lyra exclaimed gleefully. “You didn’t tell me!!”

Albus kissed her hair and waved back at her friends. They were looking at him with wide eyes, certainly having been told loads about the Potters (and Malfoys) from their parents.

“I didn’t know ‘til a few minutes ago,” Albus explained.

Lyra leaned back just enough to look up at Albus’s face. He looked directly down at her. Her smile waned a bit. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”

Albus’s heart dropped a bit. “I know. I’m sorry. I had to go to work.”

Lyra’s eyes studied his. “But you go to work after I’m at school.”

“Not today. I had to go in early.”

“I thought just Papa has to work early or late ‘cause he saves lives.”

“No, pumpkin, everybody who works has to go in early or late sometimes.”

She frowned. “Well, I don’t want you to ever go in early ever again. Okay?”

He smiled slightly. “Okay. I’ll do my best.”

“You better do your _very, very_ best!” Lyra said bossily. Albus studied her nicely-done plait when she sat back down.

“Did _Papa_ do your hair like that?!”

Scorpius had never quite gotten the hang of hair-related spells. Albus almost always did them.

Lyra giggled at the mere idea. “No way! Lulu did it. She helped me ‘cause you were gone and Papa got called away _two times_!”

Albus’s heart had sunk a bit more, but he was trying his hardest to make it stop. “Oh? So Lulu got you ready this morning?”

“And Cade. And Papa sometimes. But first a kid vomited at the hospital so much that he _choked on it_ —ew!”

“Ew,” Albus agreed half-heartedly, his mind elsewhere.

“And _then…_ oh, it’s very, very sad, Daddy.” Lyra looked down at her lap.

 _That_ got Albus’s full attention. He looked down at his daughter. “Oh no. What happened?”

She looked around herself, saw that her friends were hanging on every word, and said: “This is secret and you can’t know about it. Look away. Go on! Mae, this is _really secret_.”

Lyra’s best friend at school looked greatly offended. Lyra climbed over onto Albus’s lap and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“A werewolf got a kid,” she whispered.

Albus’s stomach lurched. “Oh, God.”

Lyra nodded, her eyes wide. She moved back over into her seat. “Daddy didn’t mean to tell me only I heard him telling Lulu and Cade.”

“I’m so sorry you had to hear that, Lyra.”

“I’m not. I like knowing stuff.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Lyra picked her sandwich up and took a huge bite. Albus gazed off while she ate, unsure where the sick, nagging feeling in his stomach had come from. Was it the realization that Lyra had heard about something as awful as a werewolf attacking a child? Or was it from the knowledge that he hadn’t been there to help her get ready for school but his sister had been?

He knew he shouldn’t have asked it, but he couldn’t help it. “So how was your morning? Must’ve been cool, right, having Lulu get you ready instead of Daddy?”

He could almost hear Scorpius scolding him for that sort of question, but it was too late to take it back. In many ways, he knew that Scorpius was right when he said that Albus was his own worst enemy.

“Yeah, it was cool!” Lyra agreed. “We danced to music and had _coffee_!”

Albus’s eye twitched. “Lulu gave you _coffee_? You’re five.”

“It was delicious,” Lyra said seriously. She slid back and gestured down at her clothes. “Iris let me wear her dress!” The dress policy was much laxer at the primary school than at Hogwarts, so most days, Lyra was free to wear whatever she liked, and today was no exception. She was wearing an emerald pinafore dress that had metallic dragons on it that blew glitter-filled puffs of smoke every few seconds.

“It’s lovely,” Albus said. He leaned back and glanced down at her legs. If she hadn’t already told him that the Rowles had gotten her ready rather than Scorpius, he would’ve known from her attire. Scorpius always dressed her impeccably, but today, she had on rainbow knee-socks that clashed horribly with her dress and a pair of scuffed-up Mary Janes that she only ever wore to play outside in. “Nice…socks. I’m guessing Papa didn’t drop you off this morning?”

“No, Lulu did.”

“Right.” Albus squinted off towards the rest of the dining hall as Lyra continued munching on her lunch. “Well, I missed you terribly this morning, you know. And I’m glad your morning went okay even though it was so different.”

Had he ever felt more vulnerable? His worst fear was that Lyra would tell him that she enjoyed this morning way more than every other morning (that she enjoyed Lily taking care of her more than Albus taking care of her.) He waited for her to speak, but instead, he felt her arms wrap around his waist. He glanced down at her. She pressed her face against his ribs.

“But I like our mornings best,” she mumbled into his shirt.

His heart rose. “Yeah?”

“Yes. You can’t _ever_ go to work early ever again.”

He had to laugh. “Okay, Lyra. What about Papa? Is he banned from going to work early?”

“Yes. Unless another kid gets attacked by a werewolf…I think that’s fair.”

Albus laughed. “Yeah, I think so, too. It wouldn’t be right to keep a Healer from an injured kid.”

“But there _are_ other healers,” Lyra pointed out matter-of-factly. “Victoire and Lumie and the guy with the really big nose.”

Albus choked on the laugh he’d been trying to suppress. “Robert. His name is Robert.” His petty vendetta against the healer who’d harbored a crush on Scorpius for years kept him from scolding Lyra on her rudeness.

“Right, him.”

“Yes, there are others, but who would _you_ want to be your healer if you got hurt?” Albus asked.

It was immediate. “Papa.”

“Me, too,” Albus said. “So I think he can get a pass for going into work early sometimes.”

“But not you ‘cause you do _nothing_ at work.”

Albus scoffed. “I do so! I do loads of things at work!”

“Do you save kids’ lives?” Lyra challenged.

“I…sometimes! I…help with other Aurors saving lives!” he defended.

“You do _loads_ of paperwork,” Lyra corrected him. “Paperwork isn’t even as important as _me_.”

Albus tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “Nothing is as important as you.”

She shrugged. “So stay at home all the time and teach me there. It only makes sense.” She took a large bite out of her sandwich.

“You’re going to convince me one of these days. And whenever people get mad at me for my decision, I’m going to blame you,” he joked.

“That’s okay with me!”

Albus smiled. Once lunch was over, he walked his rainbow-socked daughter back down to her classroom, hugged her goodbye, and returned to his office. He noticed his workday felt just a bit more bearable than it had before.


	18. III. Pumpkin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While eavesdropping, Lyra stumbles upon a discovery. Albus struggles with keeping secrets from his clever, inquisitive child. Scorpius tries to help Albus see things in perspective, but when it comes to Lyra, Albus has a difficult time prioritizing head over heart. Lyra just wants some damn answers.

“It’s in the suitcase.”

“Definitely.”

“At the very, very bottom!”

“Mmhmm.”

“We’ve got to sneak past them—”

“—open the suitcase—”

“—take the egg—”

“—hide it somewhere sneaky…”

Iris suddenly shot a hand out and grabbed Elliot’s shoulder, yanking him back behind the corridor wall so he was no longer peeking into the guest bedroom. A second later, the adjoining toilet door opened. Lyra flattened herself against the corridor wall nervously. Her heart began to pound as she heard her aunt and uncle’s intermingled voices and approaching footsteps.

“Let’s go back to my room,” Lyra whispered quickly.

“Shh!!” Elliot exclaimed (rudely, in Lyra’s opinion. It was not nice to shush people. Especially people older than you. And she was three entire months older than that boy.)

“I fucking understand that,” Lulu said. She sounded annoyed, like how Lyra’s daddy sounded whenever his boss sent him letters on the weekends. Lyra automatically gasped at the naughty word; Iris reached out and slapped her hand over Lyra’s mouth in response, her eyes flashing with warning.

“But you’re not listening to my point, Caden.”

“I _am_ listening,” Cade said back. He said it all heavy like he wanted very much to sigh for a long time. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

A drawer shut from somewhere in the room. Elliot edged forward bravely. He peeked back around the doorframe. Lyra watched his profile nervously as he spied on his parents, terrified they’d be caught at any moment.

“Of course it’s not a ‘good’ idea. But it’s better than having to dodge them every single time we come here and constantly burn their letters.”

The bed springs made a slight wheeze as somebody sat on the bed. Elliot backed up quickly and disappeared into the corridor once more. The conversation continued from the bedroom, and despite Lyra’s fear of being caught spying (how _embarrassing)_ , she was getting really curious.

“I don’t agree. I have _nothing_ to say to them. Truly, Lily. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to talk to them. And I _don’t_ want the twins to see them or talk to them, either. That hasn’t changed at all.”

Lyra looked curiously at her cousins. Going by their furrowed brows, they were just as confused by this conversation as she was. Who were Lulu and Cade talking about?

“I just feel like this is going to catch up with us sooner or later. _They’re_ going to catch up with us. They’re going to corner us in public or something and they’ll say ‘oh, hi, Iris and Elliot, we’re your grandparents!’, and before we can even explain to the twins what they’re _really_ like, they’ll win them over with money or presents or something and then the twins will also be ill with us for lying to them and we’re already lying enough. And you know me. I love a good lie. Deception is necessary sometimes. But I don’t like lying to our kids. And the older Lyra gets, the stranger this whole _thing_ gets.”

Lyra felt a thrill race down her spine at the sound of her name. She furrowed her eyebrows, not unlike her cousins had done. The three kids looked at each other with equally baffled expressions. What were they talking about? And what did _she_ have to do with it?

Caden sighed. It sounded sad. Lyra wanted to go in there and hug him.

“So we’ll talk with Iris and Eliot about it. We’ll explain that they’ve got great-grandparents they’ve never met, but we’ll tell them _why_ they’ve never met them. We don’t have to talk to them—”

“ _You_ don’t have to talk to them. I know you don’t want to. I never meant that you had to. _I’ll_ do it. Just let me go to them, let me threaten them and let me get the letters to stop—”

“I don’t want you anywhere near them, either.”

Lily scoffed. Lyra heard the bed squeak again. She guessed her aunt had sat down on it, too. “Why the hell not? I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like it. The thought of you in a room with them.” He sounded very unhappy.

“ _Why_?” Lily pressed, confused. “They’re ancient. What are they going to do, wheeze on me?”

“I dunno. I don’t know. It just makes me very uncomfortable. They destroyed anything I ever cared about my whole life. They took it away or…” he stopped, but to Lyra, it sounded like he wasn’t really done talking. He waited for what felt like a long time to say anything else. “I don’t want you around them. I just don’t. Please, Lily. They’re _my_ family. It’s my choice. I don’t want you to meet with them.”

“…Fine. Fine. We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing. We’ll destroy all the letters and we’ll avoid them. But we need to talk to the twins. I’m feeling like a really snaky parent, Caden. It’d be one thing for them to just have a secret half-sister, but a secret set of great-grandparents _too_? They’ll start to think they’ve got secret family members hidden all over the map.”

Lyra’s head spun around to look at her cousins. The three met wide eyes.

“What the _fuck!!”_ Iris hissed under her breath.

Elliot made a weird choking sound. His face paled. “How can somebody be half a sister _?! Where is the other half?!”_

“What the fuck!!”

“I don’t want a half-sister! I’m going to have nightmares! What the fuck! _WHERE IS THE OTHER HALF—”_

Iris quickly slapped her hand over Elliot’s mouth, but it was too late. In his shock and confusion, he’d blurted out too-loud words. Lyra immediately turned on the spot and sprinted towards her bedroom, not even waiting to see if her aunt and uncle had heard. Thankfully, her cousins were right on her heels. They ran into her room, dove under the covers of her bed, and fell completely still. Lyra counted her racing heartbeats. _One, two, three, four, five, six…_

The door opened wide. It audibly brushed the plush carpet beneath it as it did. “—I swear I heard them…”

“Hm. Doesn’t look like they’ve budged,” Caden said. “But they’re brilliant little fakers when it comes to naptime.”

Lyra’s aunt hesitated in the doorway. Lyra worked very hard to keep from moving; it was a feat, considering Elliot’s hair was tickling her neck and she wanted to move away from him. Lyra held her breath to keep from giggling. Just when she was certain she couldn’t remain still and quiet a second longer, she heard the _pop!_ of apparition. Her papa’s laughter flittered throughout the house a second later. Relief flooded through Lyra.

“Oh, brilliant, they’re back,” Lily said. “I’m _starving_.”

With that, her aunt and uncle left the room, cracking the door behind them. Lyra scooted back from her cousins and let out a relieved sigh.

“Let’s sneak in and get the egg while they’re eating,” Elliot proposed.

Lyra looked at him in surprise. “What? No!”

“Not now,” Iris said impatiently. She was looking hard at the duvet. “I didn’t think Daddy had any family at all except for us.”

Elliot frowned. “Mummy and Daddy are big fucking liars.”

“A _half-sister_ ,” Lyra repeated quietly to herself. She knocked the word around in her mind. She had never heard it before, but she knew it wasn’t anything to do with somebody being cut in half like Elliot seemed to think. “What do they mean?”

“I dunno. But I’ve already got a _whole_ sister and one is _enough_ ,” Elliot muttered.

Lyra was struggling to think of a time she’d heard the word ‘half’ used in any way that didn’t have to do with splitting something, but she was failing. All she could think about was when she and Grandfather split their giant cup of earl grey and lavender ice cream from Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Grandfather always drew a neat line through the purple-grey ice cream with his spoon, right down the middle, right in half. And when Lyra and Benji put their pocket money together to buy something in the muggle world, she paid for _half_ and Benji paid for _half._ So how could that word go with the word _sister_? Was there another meaning to _sister_ that Lyra didn’t know? She couldn’t remember ever hearing one, not in conversation, not at school, and not in any of the books Papa and Daddy read her from their library. She was terribly confused.

And, apparently, she was the only one still bothered about it. Her cousins had their heads bowed together and were already talking in low, rapid whispers about another plot or something equally stressful. Lyra felt a bit nervous because her dads were home now; she didn’t want to be caught doing anything naughty while they were home.

“ _Brilliant_!” Iris beamed in response to something Elliot had said that Lyra had missed. Iris reached across the bed and grabbed Lyra’s hand. “Let’s go!”

Lyra didn’t budge. “Go where?”

“Elliot’s plan!” Iris said impatiently. She often answered Lyra without actually answering a thing, as if Lyra was supposed to have read her mind or something. It was annoying.

“What plan?” Lyra shot back.

“The _plan_! C’mon!!” Elliot exclaimed.

“But I didn’t hear a plan! When did you say anything about a plan?!” Lyra said, growing even more irritated. “I am not a mind-reader!” she exploded, using the same tone of voice that her daddy used when he said that same phrase to her when she was having a strop and couldn’t use her words to tell him what was wrong. Her irritation mingled in with her reluctance to be caught doing anything bad by Papa or Daddy. “I’m going to take my nap. For real.”

Elliot’s jaw dropped. Iris’s eyes flickered once to Elliot and then back to Lyra. Her lower lip pushed out in a slight pout. “Fine. Okay.”

Lyra slowly snuggled back down into her sheets. “Okay.”

“Fine. Let’s go, El.”

Iris squirmed out from underneath the duvet and landed on the carpet beside Lyra’s bed. Elliot hesitated. He was still gaping. “You’re taking a _nap_? A real live _nap_?”

Lyra nodded but didn’t reply. Elliot shook his head in pity. “You poor thing.”

Lyra felt embarrassed. “I don’t want Papa or Daddy to see me making bad choices.”

Elliot furrowed his brow. “How come? They won’t even do anything. My friend in New Zealand gets _spanked_ when he’s naughty. I bet your dads don’t do that. So who cares?”

“I care!” Lyra said, affronted.

“Will they take every single one of your toys away?” challenged Elliot.

“No, but—”

“Will they not feed you dinner?”

“No, but—”

“Will they hang you up by your toes?”

Lyra gasped. “ _What_?!”

Elliot shrugged. “So you’re fine. Maybe they will take dessert away. Big deal. There’s tons of dessert in this world. When my daddy takes dessert away from Iris and me, we pretend to cry _loads_ , but we don’t really care, ‘cause Big Boy has a secret stash of chocolate under our beds.”

Lyra huffed. “I don’t care about _that._ I don’t want them to be angry with me.”

Iris tugged the duvet back so Lyra and Elliot’s faces were fully free. “Do they yell?” she asked knowingly.

“Not all the time, but if I did something very, very, very bad, Daddy gets loud like one time when I was very little—much too little to know better, Papa said—I ran away in Gringotts and got lost and Auntie Nora had to get me out of a vault and Daddy was _so angry_.” Even remembering it made Lyra’s tummy feel sick. She sought her stuffed unicorn and pulled it into her arms.

“Does his face turn red? Mummy’s turns _very_ red. It’s so funny.”

Lyra thought back to the last time she saw her daddy angry (yesterday when Lulu let her go outside without shoes and she cut her foot on a rock).

“Yeah,” she said. She felt they didn’t understand her. She tried another way to explain it. “I don’t like when I make them sad. I like to make them proud.”

Her cousins pondered over that for longer than she thought they would. Finally, Iris said:  “1 like when my daddy says he’s so proud of me.”

“Yeah,” Elliot agreed fervently. “And when mummy kisses me and does this,” he reached over and ruffled Iris’s hair affectionately. He puffed his chest out a second later. “She says I’m the _best_ dragon dung scooper. The _best_. But I’m not supposed to tell Iris that.”

“ _Hey_!”

“And one time I made mummy cry and then I cried,” Elliot recalled. “And we just cried and cried together and cried and cried.”

Lyra balked. “You made your mummy cry? What did you _do_?” She couldn’t imagine her daddy or papa crying. It made her heart hurt.

“He was packing a sad and would _not_ shut up,” Iris explained.

More confusion. “Packing _what_?” Sometimes she had no idea what her cousins were talking about.

“Mummy said her head was gonna _explode_ ,” Iris added. She held her hands up, set them on either side of her head, and mimed her head bursting open. Lyra winced.

“So are you coming?” Elliot asked brightly a few moments later.

“No! I already said so, didn’t I? _I_ don’t want to make Papa or Daddy not proud.”

“Fine, it’s all good,” Iris said. But somehow Lyra felt that it was _not_ all good.

“Okay,” she said uneasily. She hugged her unicorn tighter. “Bye.”

“Buh-bye.”

She snuggled down into her blankets as soon as they left. She rolled onto her right side. Then onto her left. She pulled her pillow over her head. She counted as high as she could count—to one-hundred—three times, sang her alphabet, listed all the items in her room from memory in French, sang four Pumpkin Pasties songs, and then she gave up. It was not going to work apparently.

She flopped over onto her back atop her duvet and sighed up at the ceiling. She had no idea how much longer was left of “naptime”. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d heard her aunt and uncle talking about; it hung at the back of her mind and annoyed her, like when Alice poked her over and over again. _Half-sister_. Half of what? Half human? Half human sister and half…what? Was that a way to talk about pets? Was Lulu and Cade’s owl considered the twins’ half-sister?

Lyra rolled from the top of her bed to the end over and over again, groaning in annoyance. She knew better than to ask a grown-up. It was clearly something that wasn’t meant to be said around kids, which meant she wasn’t supposed to know about it, which meant they would know she was eavesdropping if she asked. She could’ve asked Evra—Evra always helped her with everything _always_ and she would _never_ tell on her—but Evra was very far away at Hogwarts with Remus. She could ask Finnigan, but Finnigan would want to know why she was asking, and then he might tease her for being naughty.

If she couldn’t ask the adults and she couldn’t ask her cousins, who was left?

The answer came to her a few moments later, halfway through her third humming of Frère Jacques. _Books_. Books were left. She could ask _books_. Papa asked books things _all the time_. And she even knew what books had all the answers about words and what they meant. She sat straight up, a thrill of excitement racing down her spine. Her heartbeat increased. She could picture it perfectly in her head. It was a deep red color, and it was much larger than the other books, and the writing was tiny, and it was on the shelf closest to the window in the first room of their library. She had seen Daddy use it only last week (but she wasn’t supposed to tell Papa because Daddy was pretending to have already known a word that he did not know.)

She didn’t even stop to think. In her excitement to find the answers—in a giant grown-up book, all by herself, no less—she raced from her bedroom without a second thought. She caught herself at the sound of her parents’ voices and fell to a sudden stop just before the corridor ended. She could hear her daddy and papa talking with her aunt and uncle in quiet voices from the sitting room; clearly, they thought the kids were still sleeping. Lyra worried her bottom lip between her teeth and considered her plan of attack. The stairs were on the other side of the sitting room doorway. They might see her run past them. But if she moved very quickly and quietly…

She peeked into the sitting room. She waited with baited breath until all the adults were looking down at some letter on the table, their voices low with concern, and then she leapt gracefully across the corridor, landing neatly on the bottom step. She gave herself permission to do a silent little victory dance. She went with her auntie Nora to ballet classes sometimes, and clearly, she was learning _loads_.

She went up the stairs in the opposite manner from how she’d crossed the corridor. She inched up with precise, light steps, hardly even allowing herself to breathe, mindful of the creaky spots. Once she’d made it upstairs into the library, she exhaled in relief. A small smile formed on her lips after that and quietly stole over her entire face. The _library_. She had _never_ been up here alone before. It looked larger than usual somehow. Every inch of the walls was taken up with massive bookshelves that seemed to tower over her. Lyra walked slowly towards the first room, trailing her hand along the spines of the books as she passed, pausing every few steps to examine a particularly pretty or enticing book spine. She pulled three different books free, unable to help herself, before she even made it to the room she was looking for. She had no idea what they were called—she couldn’t read the titles very well, though she knew the first had something to do with dogs and the third with stars—but something about the metallic lettering called to her.

She set her newly snagged books down on a side table near a cozy armchair and walked over to where she knew the word book was. It was too big for her to try and move, so she grabbed a nearby stool and pushed it over in front of the table the book was on. She opened it up and puzzled over its overwhelming contents for a moment. The writing was so tiny that it hurt her eyes to look at it, but she found that if she tried very hard, she could make out some words that she knew.

She wasn’t sure where to find _half-sister_. Papa had shown her before how the words were in order by the alphabet, so she took a second to figure out what half-sister would start with. She knew her hs and she knew she needed to start there. She knew the second sound was an _a_ , but it took her _ages_ to look through all the words with _ha_ , and then she couldn’t find anything that said “ _haf sistr_.” She looked once, twice, _three times_ , but still failed to find the word. Was it a fake word?

She was growing very frustrated by her sixth time looking through the same three pages. She slumped to the carpet and gave up. And she didn’t mean to fall asleep—of course she would never waste her precious time alone in the library on _sleep_ —but she must’ve been much more exhausted than she thought. She slipped off before she could do anything about it.

* * *

 

She was jostled awake. When she opened her eyes, she saw her Daddy’s jaw. He was carrying her. Uh oh.

“Uh oh,” she said softly.

She saw her daddy smile for a second. He looked down at her. She met his green eyes (her eyes, too!) and gave a sheepish smile back, testing the water.

“Uh oh is right,” he told her, though he didn’t sound angry. Why was that? She wasn’t allowed in the library alone and they both knew it. “What were you doing up here, Lyra?”

“I was supposed to be napping,” she said at once.

He smiled quickly again. “Right. _I_ know that. Now I see that _you_ knew that. So why don’t you tell me why you weren’t?”

She didn’t respond. She’d thought he was carrying her downstairs—probably to tell Papa what she’d done and then they would tell her she didn’t make good choices—but he stopped near her favorite armchair in the whole library and sat down in it. Lyra cuddled up to his chest as soon as he did. He didn’t seem too angry and she was still really sleepy.

“To be honest, I’m just really relieved that I didn’t find you on the roof with the twins,” her dad admitted softly.

Lyra looked up at him, confused. “The roof?”

He nodded gravely. “The _roof_.”

“It’s dangerous up on that thing.”

He smiled again. “If only your cousins had your good sense. You should let them borrow it.”

She wasn’t sure how she’d do that, but she nodded anyway. “Okay. I’ll try…”

He laughed. She was just glad he wasn’t angry with her. “So?” he prompted. “What’s with the secret library nap?”

She laid her head back against his chest. She pulled at a loose string on his shirt sleeve. “It wasn’t _supposed_ to be a nap.”

“What was it _supposed_ to be?”

She didn’t answer right away. She was weighing her responses very carefully before speaking. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You don’t know why you came upstairs to the library?”

“I was…sleepwalking,” she lied.

Her dad laughed loudly. “Creative. Very creative.”

Lyra hesitated. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.

“So what’s the truth?”

Not. “I was looking for something.”

“What?”

“Something.”

“ _What_?”

“A word.”

“What word?”

“An h-word.”

“An _h-word_?” he repeated, puzzled. “What sort of word…oh! Has Lulu been swearing around you again?!” he seemed angry suddenly.

“No. At least…” she felt very self-conscious suddenly; _was_ it a bad word? “…I don’t _think_ so…”

“Well, what word was it?” he asked.

She clamped her lips shut tightly and closed her eyes.

“Lyra?” he sounded surprised.

“I don’t want to tell you,” she admitted quietly. She turned and hid her face in his chest.

“Why?” he asked, confused.

Honestly, she said: “I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“Okay…well…can you _spell_ it for me?” he tried.

Frustration sparked within Lyra’s chest again. “No. I can’t figure it out!”

“Sound it out for me and I’ll help,” he offered.

Before she could think that through, she caught herself going: “ _H-a-f—”_

“‘Haf’? Half?”

Lyra realized he’d tricked her into telling him. “No,” she lied.

“Why are you looking up half? You know what that word means. If I have an entire cake and I give you half how will I split—”

“I know what half means,” she interrupted him, impatient. “But I don’t know what it means when it’s in another word.”

“In another word? Like how? ‘Halfway’?”

“No. Like…half-sister.” Her cheeks burned hot. She couldn’t meet her dad’s eyes. And sure enough, she felt his posture stiffen beneath her. He sat up straighter.

“What?” his tone sounded really serious. “Where did you hear that?”

Lyra felt horrified. “Is it a naughty word? I didn’t know.”

“No. It’s not…Lyra, where did you hear it?” he pressed.

“Lulu and Cade were talking…” her dad shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked cross. “I heard them, but they didn’t know I was there.”

It took her daddy a minute or so to get his words out. “And what were they saying about that word?”

That part was easy. “That Iris and Elliot have a half-sister that they don’t even know about. But I didn’t understand, Daddy. How can it be just _half_ a sister?”

She looked up at him curiously, her intrigue overwriting her worry about getting in trouble. At first, when she looked at his eyes, he looked upset, but the longer she looked, the less angry he grew. Finally, he relaxed back against the chair. He pulled her into a hug. She gripped him back greedily, relieved he wasn’t angry with her.

“A half-sister is a sister that is related to you through just one parent,” he explained. She didn’t even fully understand still, but she was glad she was getting some sort of answer. “So instead of having the same parents as that sibling, you only have the same mum or the same dad, not both.”

She was still confused. “I don’t get it.”

He seemed very uncomfortable. “I’m not sure how to explain it any better,” he said shortly. He wracked his brains. “You know how Mae has a step-dad?”

Lyra nodded at once. “He eats sprouts every single night.”

“Er…right. Well, you know how her mum had a new baby last week?”

Lyra nodded again. “The baby looks sort of like a potato.”

“That baby is Mae’s half-sister.”

Lyra gasped aloud. “What in the world!” she exclaimed, shocked and amazed. “Daddy, do you think she knows that?!”

“I think so, yeah.”

Did _everyone_ have a secret half-sibling they didn’t know about? Lyra was beginning to wonder. “But Mae told me it’s her sister.”

“The baby is her sister. Her _half-_ sister. Because she was made in her mum’s tummy, where Mae was made, but they have different dads.”

A light flickered on in Lyra’s mind. “Carl is Mae’s dad. But her step-dad is the new baby’s daddy.”

“Right.” Her dad nodded once. “Half-sibling.”

Lyra pondered over that carefully. Her mind turned the words and concepts over one by one. “I have two dads.”

Her dad stiffened again beneath her. “Right.” It almost sounded like he was whispering.

“So I can’t have a half-sister ‘cause you and papa can’t grow other men’s babies in your tummies,” she reasoned. That was sort of a relief and sort of a disappointment. Lyra wanted a sibling terribly, but she wasn’t sure she wanted a secret one. She mulled over these new facts about life and placed them beside the ones she already knew. “Somebody grew me for you since men can’t have babies in their tummies, right?”

Her dad’s heartbeat was pounding so hard Lyra could feel it. It felt all wrong. It wasn’t going _thump, thump_ but instead was making all sorts of insane beats.

“Right,” he breathed again. He cleared his throat gruffly. “Somebody did.”

Lyra cocked her head to the side and pursed her brow. “So if the person who grew me had a baby would that baby be _my_ half-sister?”

“No,” he said at once. “Because the person who grew you isn’t related to you by blood.”

Lyra blinked. “Oh. So I only have a half-sister if you or Papa grow another baby with somebody else’s help.” She was sort of disappointed.  

“Er…right. Okay. Enough about half-whatevers. How would you like to go downstairs and help me bake a cake?” he offered.

Lyra shrieked in excitement. Any and all previous thought was gone from her. “A _cake_?! Right _now_?! _Today_?! It’s not even anybody’s birthday!!”

“Then I guess it’s just your lucky day,” he said.

“It is! It is! Because I’m so lucky that you’re my daddy!” she cried, overcome with joy. She threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her tight. She was so happy about the cake that her animated chatter never stopped long enough to see how worried her dad looked.

* * *

 

She ran around outside with the twins while the cake baked, and as soon as it was done and cooled, she and the twins helped decorate it with loads of icing. She ate two slices before dinner, ended up with a tummy ache, fell asleep in Papa’s lap on the sofa while he rubbed nausea oils into her wrists, and then woke around dinner time. She was too groggy to appreciate her dinner and really did _not_ appreciate the vegetables. She ate three bites, pouted and refused to say a word to anybody, and then she got her way and was told she could go on to bed. Papa walked her up, and had she been less sleepy, she might have questioned why it was only Papa that night.

“Now do you understand why I always say no to sweets before dinner?” Papa asked her. He waved his wand and summoned her toothbrush over to him as soon as they stepped into the bathroom. Lyra waited as he put toothpaste on it for her. She was so tired that she brushed each tooth very slowly. She shrugged.

“You get a tummy ache and then you don’t eat any real food and real food is what gives you nutrients,” Papa continued.

Lyra shrugged again. She yawned. She almost fell asleep standing as Papa pulled her comb through her hair; she staggered back and leaned against him.

“You’re really sleepy tonight,” Papa said, surprised. He leaned over and rested his cheek against her forehead. She knew he was checking if she had a fever. She must not have because he merely kissed her forehead and stood back up. “It’s a lot of fun to have your cousins here, isn’t it?”

Lyra nodded robotically. It _was_ fun, but she was too tired to feel much of anything.

Her dad chuckled. “Let’s get you to bed. C’mon.”

Lyra tripped into her pajamas, crawled beneath her covers, and then came to her senses. “Where’s Daddy?”

Papa opened her first book. “He had to deal with something. He’ll be up here very soon.”

Lyra rested her head against her papa’s arm. “When is that?”

“By book number five,” Papa promised.

She was nodding off to sleep by the end of book one. She was about to drift off completely when a sudden, angry voice jarred her awake with a gasp. She sat straight up in Papa’s arms and listened to the sound of her daddy yelling from downstairs, her eyes wide with fright.

“It’s okay,” Papa soothed her at once. He pulled her back into his arms so that she was lying down. He went back to their book. “‘The little boy turned to the muggle magician and he said ‘no, sir, I do not believe your tricks, and I will not give you a sickle more! You are wrong—dreadfully wrong, in fact!—and I—”

A door slammed so loudly from downstairs that Lyra flinched. Papa’s words died off.

“—UTTERLY RIDICULOUS! I DIDN’T DO A THING! YOU CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF, ALBUS—I WON’T LET YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THAT—”

“AND I WON’T LET YOU TELL MY DAUGHTER THINGS THAT I’M NOT READY FOR HER TO KNOW—”

“I DIDN’T TELL HER ANYTHING! NOT ONE THING! I CAN’T HELP WHAT SHE EAVESDROPS AND HEARS!”

“YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO TALK ABOUT THAT IN THIS HOME—”

“TALK ABOUT WHAT? REALITY?”

“DON’T YOU DARE—”

There was another crash. Lyra cringed into Papa’s arms. Her eyes felt hot. She didn’t understand, but somehow, she knew this was about what she had overheard. She felt horrible enough to cry at that realization.

“Papa, I didn’t know it was bad,” she whispered, desperate for him to understand. He looked down at her. His eyes looked just as sad as she felt. He wrapped her up in a tight hug.

“Oh, Lyra, ignore them. Daddy shouldn’t be yelling. He fights with Lulu—he’s always fought with Lulu. It has nothing to do with you.”

“But they said me. I heard him.”

“I…he…you didn’t do anything wrong, Lyra. Not one thing.”

“I was being an eavesdropper,” she reminded him.

Papa kissed her hair. “You still didn’t do anything wrong.”

The yelling swelled again.

“I _DO_ RESPECT YOUR WISHES! I HAVE _NEVER_ STEPPED OVER THE LINE AND SAID OR DONE _ANYTHING_ THAT YOU’VE TOLD ME NOT TO DO CONCERNING _THIS SITUATION_! WHY ARE YOU TREATING ME LIKE I’M SOME SORT OF ENEMY?!”

“BECAUSE YOU VERY NEARLY RUINED EVERYTHING BY BEING CARELESS!”

“EXACTLY WHAT DID I ALMOST RUIN? YOUR FRAGILE SETUP OF LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS? LIES, MIND YOU, THAT YOU’VE FORCED ON  _MY CHILDREN_ AS WELL!”

The loud sound from below shook Lyra’s bedroom floor this time. She felt close to tears. She was so afraid that they would hurt each other and she didn’t understand why they were so mad. She just felt like it was her fault.

An unexpected voice joined in the yelling. It was shocking to Lyra because she had never, ever heard her uncle yell before. It made her jump.

“THAT IS _ENOUGH_!” he boomed, furious. “THE KIDS CAN HEAR YOU!” She didn’t even know his voice could _get_ that loud. And to Lyra’s horror, her papa slid back from her as soon as Caden yelled as if preparing to leave her and go down to help.

“No!!!” Lyra yelped, terrified. She locked her arms around Papa’s neck. “Don’t go!”

“I’ll be right back,” he promised her. “I’m going to go talk to Daddy.”

She didn’t want Papa going down there with all those angry people. “No.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t go, Papa. Don’t go!”

“Lyra, come on, pumpkin,” he said softly. “I’ll be right back.”

She did not want him to go, but she stopped arguing and loosened her grip. She hid under her blankets and hugged her many stuffed animals while her papa went downstairs. She heard her papa and uncle talking slightly louder than normal—but not yelling—and then all the yelling stopped completely. She stuck her head out of her covers when she heard her bedroom door click open, but it wasn’t her dads. She sat up and beckoned her cousins over to her; they climbed up on the bed beside her.

“I knew it,” Iris told her sagely. “Uncle Al’s face _does_ get bright red like Mummy’s when he’s angry.”

“I don’t like it,” Elliot told them, his eyes chained to the bedroom door as if waiting for the yelling to start again. Lyra didn’t know if he meant her dad’s red face or the fighting, but going by his uneasy expression, she thought it was probably the fighting.

Lyra was glad he felt that way, too. “I _hate_ it,” she agreed. “Why are they fighting?”

The twins shrugged. “I think it’s your dad’s fault.”

But her dad never yelled like that, at least not that she could remember. Something had to be very wrong to make him do that.

“It’s okay,” Iris told her, her warm eyes studying Lyra’s downcast face. She reached out and yanked Lyra into a much-needed hug. “Brothers and sisters fight all the time. Really. Elliot pushed me down the stairs once, but we still love each other.”

Lyra didn’t know what to say back to that. She just knew she’d never push somebody she loved down the stairs.

“This might cheer you up,” Elliot whispered, and before Lyra could say a word, he pulled that dragon egg out from his pocket. Lyra’s stomach dropped.

“That does not cheer me up at all! At _all_ , Elliot!” Lyra said shrilly. “Your mum is going to be so mad!! _So mad_!”

It had once seemed very cool—them having a dragon egg—but after listening to her dad and Lulu scream, she was certain she didn’t want to be one getting screamed at.

“And Lulu said it isn’t safe for the baby dragon to be carried all about!” Lyra added sternly. “You’ll hurt it!”

“We’re not keeping it,” said Iris innocently. “We just want you to talk to it some and then we’ll put it back.”

Lyra forgot whatever she was about to say. She blinked. “What? Why?”

“Because if you talk to baby dragons when they are in their eggs they like you more when they hatch and we want you to have a dragon to be yours when you come to visit,” Elliot explained. He held the egg out. “Sing to it.”

“I…no. I won’t sing to it.”

“Sing to it!”

“No! I don’t want to sing to it!” Lyra said stubbornly. She felt her anxiety claw its way up her throat. “I just want Papa and I want Daddy and I want my ten books and I want to go to sleep!”

Iris and Elliot stared at her for a long time. She refused to drop her gaze.

“All right then,” Iris said finally. She shrugged. “No dragon for you.”

“ _I’ll_ sing to it,” Elliot declared. He held the egg up in his hands, brought it close to his lips, and began crooning a Butterbeers in Boston song. Lyra’s eyes darted impatiently to her bedroom doorway.

“Go on before my dads get back in here,” she ordered. She nervously gestured for them to shoo. “Well, go on! We’ll get in loads and loads of trouble if they see that!”

Iris and Elliot didn’t seem worried about Lyra’s dads finding them with the stolen egg. But when they heard their mum’s voice drifting up the stairs, they scrambled into frantic action.

“Shit!”

“Fuck!”

“Shit-fuck!!”

Lyra grumbled, annoyed, as they both fell down onto the floor and made quite a ruckus of crawling beneath her bed. The frame shook a couple of times as they inadvertently kicked it. Lyra sighed heavily and listened to their muffled bickering as they compressed themselves into the small space. They had only just gotten situated when Lyra’s door opened. She looked up quickly, hoping she didn’t look too guilty. She didn’t need to worry; her daddy looked guilty enough for the both of them.

Papa stepped past Daddy and walked over to sit on the edge of her bed. Lyra resisted the urge to hold her breath. Thankfully, the twins were silent.

“Ready for bed?” Papa asked her softly as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Lyra looked around him at her dad. He walked over a bit sheepishly and sat down beside Papa.

“You were fighting with Lulu,” Lyra stated. “I heard it.”

Her daddy sighed. “I was.”

Lyra cocked her head to the side. “Why?” she had to ask. “Because of me?”

Both her dads bristled at that. Papa reached out and pulled her against his chest in a hug. Daddy’s jaw clenched and he closed his hands into fists.

“ _No_ ,” Daddy said. Lyra wanted to believe him, but he still looked a bit too guilty, like he’d been caught stealing biscuits. “And I’m sorry for yelling like that around you, Lyra.”

She wasn’t willing to let it go. “But I heard you say something about me.”

“I—I wasn’t—” Daddy stopped talking and looked at Papa. Papa shook his head once. “Nobody’s angry with you, Lyra. Let’s just forget about it.”

Lyra _couldn’t_. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand everything. You’re a child. And I’m the adult. And I’m saying _don’t worry about it_.”

Lyra wracked her brains. “Are you mad because I know about the twins’ secret half-sister?”

Her daddy’s face went really red. For a second, she wondered if he’d yell at _her_. “No. And you should forget about that.”

“Albus—” Papa tried to say.

Daddy interrupted him. “It _wasn’t important_ ,” he stressed. He shot a stern look at Papa, like Papa was in trouble, too.

She _knew_ she should’ve let it go, but the theories fell out of her mouth against her own will. “Did Lulu have another husband before Cade and another family?”

“ _No_. Now hush about that. Which book shall we read first?” Daddy asked, trying to change the subject.

Lyra pointed reluctantly at one of the books on her bedside table. Her mind was still whirling.

“But if she didn’t—”

“ _Lyra_ ,” Daddy warned sharply. Something in his tone made Lyra shut up at once. She felt a bit wounded by it. She considered telling him that she didn’t even want him to snuggle with her that night, but she knew she’d end up crying if she tried to go to sleep without him there, so she sighed again and then crawled beneath her duvet. Her dads settled on either side of her. Papa opened the book she’d pointed at and started reading. Lyra sat stubbornly between them, refusing to cuddle up to Daddy like she normally did, but she only made it a few pages before she gave in and slid down to lie beside him. He wrapped her up in his arms tighter than normal like he thought she might go somewhere. Lyra had a difficult time focusing on her stories—she wanted more than anything to ask the dozens of questions flowing through her mind—but by the sixth book, she was close to sleep. She wondered if the twins had fallen asleep already…they must’ve…she’d never seen them be so quiet for so long before…

She slept strangely. She wasn’t sure if she was awake or asleep but rather seemed to be hovering somewhere in between. In her dreams—or maybe in real life—she heard her Papa stop reading during the seventh book (which was cheating ‘cause he always promised her he read all ten every night even when she fell asleep! She didn’t know what to do with all these newly uncovered lies.)

“Is she asleep?” Papa asked.

“I think so,” Daddy whispered back.

It was quiet for a long moment.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I can’t even think straight about the issue. I panic.”

“I know. But you’re going to have to get over it. I don’t mean that cruelly, Albus…you know I love you and I never want to do anything to make you uncomfortable. But all this lying…I don’t know. I don’t feel good about it. She’s asking too many questions now, all the time. She’s too clever. We’ve already told her that we used a surrogate—”

“Only because we had to. She asks _so many questions_.”

“At any rate, she’s going to find it all out eventually, and it will be better coming from us all at once rather than from other people in bits and pieces.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Stop that.”

“I mean it. It is.”

“It didn’t use to worry you this much.”

“Because before the idea of her one day knowing was so far away. But she’s getting old enough now to understand. And I’m terrified.”

“There’s no reason to be—”

“You can’t know that. You can’t see the future.”

“I don’t know…I have a history of oddly prophetic dreams. It’s going to be _fine_. _This_ attitude will be what pushes her away.”

Daddy was quiet. “What if she likes her better?”

“Better than _you_? Than her _daddy_?”

“Yeah.”

“Albus.”

“I’m serious, Scorpius.”

“She _won’t_.”

“What if she wishes she had a mum? I can’t be a mum. I can’t do…mum-things.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can do whatever you please. She doesn’t need a ‘mum’. She needs parents who love her. And she’s got that.”

Lyra—in her hazy state stuck between awake and asleep—didn’t feel particularly shocked by the topic of conversation, but her mind did snag on the word _mum_. She had never wished that she had a mum. She knew that some people had a mum and a dad—like her cousins—and some people had two dads—like herself and Auntie Nora—and some people had two mums. Some people had blue eyes and some had brown and some—like her and Harry and Daddy—had green. Some had red hair and some had blonde and some had black. She didn’t wish that she had blue eyes or brown hair any more than she wished she had different sorts of parents. She loved her life. She thought her life was amazing. And up until that very moment, it had never even occurred to her that some people might think something was missing from it. Especially not her daddy.

* * *

 

She and Elliot got into their first fight of the visit the next morning. After very nearly kicking each other— _nearly_ because Iris had jumped between them and shoved them apart—Lyra recognized her own emotional limit.

“Papa,” she said, her heart pounding and her glaring eyes locked on her annoying cousin. “I need peace and quiet.”

It was with much relief that Lyra was sent off to Grandfather’s office to spend time with him, thankfully escaping a situation she knew she’d lose her temper in. Papa Flooed with her into the big, fancy office space. Lyra fixed her glasses—they’d been knocked askew during the Floo trip—and then stamped out of the fireplace and over to her grandfather. He set his parchment down on the desk in mild surprise as Lyra turned his office chair and climbed up onto his lap. He dropped his arms to wrap them around her.

“Hello, Lyra,” he greeted evenly. He looked up at Papa. “Is everything okay?”

Papa smiled. Lyra didn’t think any of it was funny. “I’m trying to avoid the third wizarding war breaking out in my home. Is it okay if Lyra stays with you for a bit so she can cool down?”

Lyra felt Grandfather look down at her. She didn’t meet his eyes. She was still seething.

“Are you and Elliot fighting?” Grandfather guessed.

“They went quite a long time without one argument,” Papa said fairly. “But this morning they seemed to have reached their limits.”

Grandfather gently tipped Lyra’s chin up, so she was looking up at him and meeting his cool grey eyes. He looked curious. “What happened?”

Lyra automatically told him everything. “Elliot _messed up all my books_!” she exploded, furious. She started shaking with rage again. Her hands balled up. Her cheeks were flaming red. “He’s _dumb_ , Grandfather! He’s daft and stupid and—and— _an idiot_!”

“That’s not very nice,” Grandfather chided. “He’s still your cousin. How did he mess up your books?”

She ground her teeth together. “He pulled them _all_ off my shelf in my room and made a fort with them!”

Grandfather arched a blond eyebrow. “The shelf you and Papa alphabetized a few weeks back?”

“And we color-coded it!!” Lyra exploded. She wanted to kick something a lot. “And he opened them and propped them up and lots fell over and the pages bent!”

“Oh no,” Grandfather said.

“Oh yes!” Lyra growled. “I’m _so angry_!”

“You have a right to feel that way.”

“I wanna kick him!”

“You can’t kick him, though.”

“I think he needs a kick!”

“I understand. But you still can’t kick him.”

Lyra turned, hid her face in Grandfather’s cloak, and groaned. Grandfather patted her back softly.

“She can stay here,” he said to Papa. “I’m getting lunch with Ginny and Harry in a few minutes anyway. Lyra will be glad to see them.”

Lyra _did_ perk up. “Ginny will let me kick him!”

“Shh,” Grandfather soothed, his hand patting again at her back. “Deep breaths, Lyra.”

She sucked in a loud, rapid breath and then exhaled it forcefully a second later. She repeated the process two more times. She could feel her face turning red.

Papa and Grandfather turned their faces to the side and fell into snickers.

“What?” Lyra demanded.

* * *

 

“Ginny!!” Lyra shrieked, her entire being flooding with joy at the sight of her grandmother. She let go of Grandfather’s hand and ran across the crowded Diagon Alley street towards Ginny. She threw her arms around her waist and hugged her so tight it hurt her arms, her face pressed into her stomach. It made the bridge of her glasses dig painfully into her nose, but she didn’t care; she was just so glad to see someone who would understand her anger. Ginny wrapped her arms around her and hugged her just as fiercely.

“Lyra! To what do I owe this wonderful surprise? Did Daddy send you to Grandfather for ‘cool down’ time again?” she guessed.

“Papa did!” Lyra responded, her face still pressed into Ginny’s jumper. She leaned back slightly and looked up at Ginny. “They won’t let me kick Elliot.”

Ginny took a step back and kneeled down, so she was face-to-face with Lyra. Her eyes studied Lyra’s seriously. “Does he need a kick?”

“ _Yes_! Let me tell you what he did! Just let me _tell you_!” Lyra fumed.

She recounted her entire abusive morning to Ginny as they settled in their seats inside the little café. She caught her Grandfather sharing amused looks with Ginny every now and then, but she wasn’t worried because Ginny would understand. And sure enough, by the time Lyra finished her story, Ginny looked grave.

“What a horrible thing he did to you,” she sympathized.

Lyra nodded rapidly. The force of it made her glasses slip down the bridge of her nose. “He needs punishment. And Merlin knows Lulu and Cade aren’t going to do it.”

She hadn’t meant the comment maliciously, but both Grandfather and Ginny choked on their drinks and fell into loud laughter. Lyra looked at them impatiently.

“What? They’re not. They punish the twins with no dessert. But guess what? Big Boy gives them dessert anyway,” she explained.

“Really now? That information might be worth repeating to Lu,” Ginny mused. She leaned across the table and took Lyra’s hands in hers. Lyra rubbed her thumb along Ginny’s ring and looked hopefully into her brown eyes. “We need to set up some rules with the twins when it comes to your stuff, don’t we?”

“Yes we _do_ ,” Lyra agreed, relieved.

“What shall they be?” Ginny prompted. “I’ll enforce them.”

“Thank _Heavens_ ,” Lyra cried, throwing her hands up to the sky with relief. All the grandkids listened to Ginny. She held up one finger. “One: Do not touch my books unless you are invited to touch my books.”

“Okay,” Ginny nodded. “Next?”

“Two,” Lyra said, holding up another finger. “Do not get me in trouble with Papa and Daddy by hiding dragon eggs underneath my bed when we already got in trouble for it once.”

“I—uh.” Ginny looked at Grandfather. “Draco? You want to handle that one?”

Lyra looked at her grandfather. He was rubbing his eyes wearily.

“Lily is your and Harry’s child. The twins aren’t _my_ grandkids. I’m not _touching_ that one,” Draco muttered.

“Yeah, sure, but you’re a bit of a father figure to Caden, I mean you mentored him all throughout school and trained him and gave him his first job and gave that wonderful speech at his wedding and—”

“Don’t even _try_ to pawn this situation off on me,” Grandfather said.

“Fine…I’ll let Harry deal with that one, then,” Ginny said.

A light went off in Lyra’s mind. “That’s delegation.”

Her grandparents looked at her.

“What?” Lyra asked. “It is. That word was in my book last night.” She got momentarily distracted. “Where _is_ my Harry?”

“He’s at the Ministry,” Ginny answered shortly. Lyra felt like maybe she wasn’t happy about that; she frowned and lines appeared between her eyebrows. “He’s going to join us if he gets done in time.”

Lyra looked anxiously at their menus. “We should wait for him.”

“He doesn’t know how long he’ll be,” Ginny reassured her. “He said to go on without him.”

“Oh,” Lyra said unhappily. She sighed. “ _Ohhhh-kay_.”

“So how was your day, Lyra?” Grandfather asked. Lyra opened her mouth to begin ranting about Elliot again, but Grandfather continued quickly. “ _Besides_ Elliot messing with your books.”

She shut her mouth.

“Why do you two bicker so much?” Ginny wondered. “You don’t see each other that often. You’d think you’d be able to go more than a few days before the fighting began.”

Lyra shrugged her shoulders grudgingly. “He is _irritating_ ,” she declared darkly.

“Irritating,” Grandfather repeated, amused. “When did you learn that one?”

Lyra shrugged again. She had learned it from a book all about a little mouse irritating a farmer. She felt very much like that poor irritated farmer.

“Elliot bosses me around,” Lyra said.

“Iris is way bossier than Elliot. Matter of fact, you’re fairly bossy, too,” Ginny pointed out.

“He does wild stuff.”

“Finnigan does wild stuff. Dahlia _constantly_ does wild stuff. Henry does wild stuff. You don’t fight with them,” Ginny pressed.

“Yeah, but…” Lyra huffed. “Elliot is just…my Elliot. I can’t kick Finnigan or Henry or Dahlia. But I can definitely kick Elliot.”

Ginny shook her head. “You two bicker like siblings. Like Albus and Lily, matter of fact, only…switched.”

Had Lyra been a less curious child, she might not have been that observant, and she might not have noticed the way her Grandfather gave Ginny an odd sort of look. It piqued her interest. She crossed her ankles and leaned forward.

“Ginny, did you know that Iris and Elliot have a secret half-sister?” She didn’t know if they knew what it was, so she lowered her voice to a whisper in case anybody overheard. “A half-sister is if your mum or your dad has _another_ baby with _another_ person. Did you know that?”

Ginny and Grandfather looked at each other quickly, their eyes wide.

“Er…where’d you hear about that, Lyra?” Ginny asked.

“Lulu and Cade. We were spying on them.”

“Lyra,” Grandfather reprimanded. “Spying is impolite.”

“I know,” she said impatiently. “But did you know that, Grandfather?”

“I…am aware of what a half-sibling is.”

Again, Lyra got the nagging feeling that they knew something she didn’t. It bothered her.

“I think everybody knows a big secret that I don’t,” she confessed uneasily.

Ginny and Grandfather exchanged another look.

“You’re a bit too clever for your own good, love,” Ginny finally said.

It wasn’t an answer to anything. Lyra squirmed impatiently. “Daddy has been acting weird too, Ginny.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? How so?”

“Well,” Lyra began. “He and Lulu were fighting very badly. They were _screaming_. And then Cade screamed at them. It was scary. That’s why I’m wearing my glasses today. Daddy was so busy fighting he didn’t even give me my eyesight potion last night!”

Ginny’s eyebrows rose. “That’s awful. They shouldn’t have done that. Shall I put them on the naughty step?”

“Yes,” Lyra decided.

“Lyra, would you like to go shopping after this?” Grandfather asked suddenly. “Gemma can meet us. We can pick out your dress for the Halloween banquet.”

Ordinarily, Lyra would’ve forgotten _everything_ at that offer. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the mystery.

“Sure,” she said distractedly. She looked back at Ginny. “I think maybe I have a half-sister, too.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? Why do you think that?”

Lyra folded her hands on the table. “I think this has something to do with me, ‘cause Daddy is acting weird like it does, so I guess maybe they think I’ll find out that I have one too since I found out that Iris and Elliot do.” She took a second to consider what that might mean. “Does Lulu have another husband or does Cade have another wife?”

“I…don’t believe either of them has another anything, but you never can be sure with them,” Ginny responded carefully.

Lyra pursed her brow thoughtfully. “Does Daddy have another husband or does Papa?”

“Neither Daddy nor Papa has another husband.”

Lyra rubbed her forehead. All this thinking was hurting her head. “Does one of them have a wife? ‘Cause wives can make babies.”

“No, they don’t,” Grandfather said stiffly. “What sort of dress are you thinking of for the banquet? Do you want to match Gemma again this time? She’s wearing navy and—”

“I don’t think Papa or Daddy would have a wife or another husband,” Lyra interrupted, growing more and more certain the more she thought about it. She couldn’t picture them holding anybody else’s hand like they held each other’s. “So I’m terribly confused. ‘Cause Papa and Daddy told me that to have me somebody else had to carry me in their tummy, but I asked Daddy if that person had another baby if that would be my half-sister, but Daddy said—”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Ginny said suddenly, interrupting Lyra’s verbal pondering. She reached across the table and took Lyra’s hands. “Lyra, you’re too clever a girl to keep secrets from.”

Lyra perked up. “So you’ll tell me the secret?”

“No. But you know what, Lyra? There isn’t really a big secret. It isn’t really a big deal. Your papa and your daddy have turned it into one by acting like this. And I’m sorry they did that.”

“I think you’ll find it’s mostly her daddy rather than her papa who decided to handle the situation like this,” Grandfather muttered.

There was a sound from beneath the table like Ginny had kicked Grandfather’s chair.

“ _Please_ tell me anyway?” Lyra pleaded.

Ginny shook her head sadly. “It’s not my place to do that. But I’ll talk to Albus. That’s the best I can do.”

Lyra groaned, annoyed. “You’re his _mum_! You can make him do _anything_! Ground him!”

Ginny laughed. Lyra resisted the urge to glare at her.

“Soooo…” Grandfather began, his tone weirdly polite. He lifted his water up and took a small sip. “How about a navy dress?”

Lyra slumped back into her seat with a defeated sigh.

* * *

 

When Lyra returned home, her cousins were waiting for her in front of the Floo. Lyra glowered at Elliot and crossed her arms over her chest. He was staring hard at his shoes. To his left, Iris nudged his shoulder. To his right, his dad cleared his throat pointedly. After a long, painful silence, Elliot muttered: “I’m sorry for messing with your books, Lyra.”

Lyra crossed her arms, too. “I don’t _believe_ it.”

Iris backhanded Elliot. “You idiot,” she hissed at him. “I said with _feeling_! You give me _nothing_ to work with! _Nothing_!”

Elliot looked off to the side and huffed. “Maybe I’d be more sorry if you didn’t try to kick my teeth.”

“I wasn’t even aiming for your teeth. I was aiming for your big head,” Lyra muttered.

“Well, my teeth are _part_ of my big head!” Elliot shot back. He looked up and pointed at his front teeth. “And this one is already loose and I don’t want _you_ knocking it out! That’s Iris’s job!”

“Lyra,” her uncle interrupted firmly. “Elliot never should have messed with your belongings without asking. He will _never_ do it again. Isn’t that right, Elliot?”

Elliot groaned for a long time. It went on and on and on. Finally, he said: “Yes, I will never do it again. I’ll ask next time.”

Lyra wanted terribly to stay mad at him, but she could feel her anger drifting away. He said he’d never do it again. And Lyra trusted Caden at any rate. After a moment of contemplation, she nodded.

“Okay. Apology accepted.”

Elliot stared at her as she turned and walked over to where Daddy was cooking something.

“Um,” Elliot said.

Lyra used her cooking stool to hoist herself up on the worktop. She sat beside the hob where Daddy was mixing something fragrant in a large pot. She looked over at Elliot; he’d rotated to stare at her as she walked over there, his eyes widened with affront from behind his glasses.

“What?” she demanded.

He furrowed his eyebrows. “You’re supposed to say ‘I’m sorry’, too, and then we hug, and then it’s over,” he said.

Lyra blinked. “Oh, but I’m not sorry.”

“Lyra,” Papa interjected.

“I’m not! You took all my books off my shelf without asking and Papa and I spent _ages_ putting them in order! We sorted them into color groups – by rainbow order!—and then we alphabetized inside every single color group!! Do you know how hard that is?! I bet you don’t even know what alphabetizing is.”

“I do,” he said uneasily. He darted his eyes nervously at Iris and then looked back at Lyra. “Is it…the soup with ABCs?”

Lyra snorted. It was sort of mean. She felt bad right after she did it.

“No. It’s a grown-up thing. You wouldn’t understand.” She pushed her nose into the air.

“Lyra, you need to apologize, too,” Papa said, to Lyra’s horror. “No matter how upset you were, violence is never the answer. Kicking somebody—”

“In their _teeth_!” Elliot added earnestly.

“—is never okay,” Papa finished. He walked over and leaned against the worktop beside Lyra. He patted her knee. “Go on. Let’s hear it.”

She did not want to apologize for anything. But she couldn’t let Papa down. She looked at Elliot, sighed a big sigh, and said: “Sorry, Elliot.”

“For…?” Papa prompted.

She sighed again. “For almost kicking you in your fat head.”

“Lyra!” Papa and Daddy chorused. Lyra thought Daddy might’ve wanted to laugh for a second, though. His lips twitched.

She sighed again. “ _Fine_. I’m sorry for trying to kick you.”

Elliot sniffed. “Thanks for saying you’re sorry.”

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Cade prompted.

Lyra’s aunt entered the room, a glass of wine in one hand and a letter in the other. She faltered in the doorway. Her shoulders sagged with disappointment. “Aw, did I miss the mini-brawl? Who won?”

“It was not a brawl. They apologized. It’s all fine,” Daddy said.

Lulu walked over to the worktop where Daddy was cooking, Papa was leaning, and Lyra was perched. She stole a piece of broccoli from a steaming casserole dish. Daddy whacked her hand hard with a wooden spoon. Lyra guessed he was still a bit angry with her.

“Ow! Fuck! It’s _one_ piece of broccoli, you arse!” Lulu chided. Glaring, she popped it into her mouth and made a very rude hand gesture at Lyra’s dad. He made one right back. Lyra gasped.

“That is not a good example to me,” Lyra whispered to Daddy. “I’m not allowed to kick Elliot but you can hit Lulu with spoons?”

“She’s got a point,” Papa said happily. “You’re not being a good example for our daughter, Albus. You’re going to have to do better.”

Grumbling, Lyra’s daddy said: “Sorry, Lily.”

She grinned and stole another piece of broccoli. “Cool.” She popped it into her mouth and turned to face the twins. “C’mon, Iris. Your nails aren’t going to paint themselves. Well, not the muggle way, at least.”

Iris beamed. “Yay!! I’ve been _waiting_ and _waiting_ for you to get done with those damn letters!!”

“I want to come! I want purple!” Elliot requested.

Lyra felt a surge of jealousy. She jumped off the worktop and ran over to her aunt. She grabbed onto her hand. “May I have my nails painted too, Lulu?! Please?! _Oh_ , please?! Look how awful there are!!” She lifted up her nails. Thankfully, she had paint from yesterday’s painting day with Nora and Benji caked underneath her nails which made them look very dirty.

Lulu patted her head. “It’s fine with me, Lyra. But you’ll have to ask _him_.”

She said it ominously. Lyra knew exactly who she was talking about. She turned and looked at her daddy with a pleading expression. “Please, Daddy? May I go with them?”

Daddy looked a bit ill. Before he could respond, Papa leaned forward, smiled, and said: “Go on, Lyra. Pick a pretty color.”

The last thing Lyra saw before she scampered from the kitchen was the unhappy look Daddy gave Papa.

* * *

 

She was _in heaven_. She squirmed happily in her seat and watched with amazement as her aunt painted a thick layer of holographic glitter onto her nails. She had chosen a different color for each nail and now her aunt was making them all rainbow sparkly. She could hardly contain her excitement.

“It’s _so cool_!” she gushed. “I love it, Lulu, I love it!!”

Her aunt smiled brightly. “It looks absolutely badass, Lyra. Nobody can pull off eccentric like you.”

Lyra beamed, incredibly flattered. Lily finished her last nail and then cast a drying spell over them.

“All right! Show them off!” Lily ordered.

Grinning, Lyra held her hands up to her face, nails facing outwards. After that, she waved royally.

“Lyra Potter-Malfoy is wearing our latest trend, rainbow nails with every color of glitter imaginable. Elliot, what does our nail model have to say?” Lily asked.

Elliot leaned over Iris’s lap and held a nail file up under Lyra’s mouth like a muggle microphone. “Well, Lyra? What do you call this look?” he asked.

Lyra giggled. And giggled again. And giggled some more.

“Well?” Elliot prompted urgently. “The public wants to know! They _need_ to know!”

“It’s…” Lyra went with the first thing she thought. “Unicorn Vomit!”

“Unicorn Vomit! Get that on the shelves!” Lily cried.

“I’ll buy a million and three bottles!” Iris cheered.  

Lyra laughed so hard that she fell forward and into her aunt’s lap. She giggled and giggled until finally, the laughter stopped. She shifted back so she was lying on the edge of the bed, her head still in Lily’s lap, and then she watched as her aunt painted Iris’s nails a very dark green. It reminded Lyra of a velvet sofa in Grandfather’s house that she often napped on. 

“I want glitter on top,” Iris requested. “The gold kind.”

“Elliot?” Lily prompted.

Without needing to search much at all, Elliot reached into the nail polish case and withdrew the exact polish they’d been talking about. His purple and black nails shined in the light as he did. Lyra didn’t know why he always asked to have his painted because he chipped it off almost as soon as the paint was dry—one nail was almost entirely bare again—but maybe he just didn’t want to be left out.

Lyra played idly with Lily’s long hair—so long the edges puddled slightly on the mattress beside her as she sat—as she finished Iris’s nails, mesmerized by the way the glitter sparkled in the light. She caught herself holding her own hand above her face many times just so she could admire her nails. She felt happy as a clam by the time they finished their nail painting party and couldn’t _wait_ to show off her nails to her dads.

“Will you paint my nails again when these mess up?” Lyra begged.

Lily tapped Lyra’s nose. “If I’m still here, absolutely.”

Lyra’s heart sank. She’d forgotten their stay was only temporary. “You could stay here ‘til Christmas.”

Lily smiled softly. She brushed Lyra’s hair out of her eyes. “Christmas is a very long time away.”

“It’s not _that_ long.”

“I thought you were sick of us being here? Isn’t that what you yelled this morning?” Lily reminded her.

Lyra felt ashamed. “I say things when I’m angry. I didn’t mean it.”

Lily patted her back. “It’s okay. I know.”

Lyra looked at her aunt with new eyes. She realized suddenly that _this_ was the person she should’ve been talking to all along. Her aunt would tell her anything. Her aunt swore in front of _babies_.

“Lulu,” Lyra began, her voice trembling a bit with nervous excitement. “I have a question.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “Did you overhear something last night? I’ll answer your questions but I think they’ll only create even more questions. See, there are certain things that adults do and—”

“Who is your secret baby?” Lyra blurted.

Lily’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“She asked who your secret baby is,” Iris repeated. “You and Daddy lie too much.”

“Yeah,” Elliot agreed, offended. “How come we never even knew we had _more_ grandparents? We thought Daddy was all alone in this entire world except for us.”

“Like a sad, endangered baby manatee with no mummy or daddy manatee because of plastic,” Iris added sadly.

“I… _what_?” Lily said, directing that comment to the twins. “You know what…forget I asked. Er, wow, look at the time—! I bet dinner is ready!”

Lyra felt her heart break. She had really thought Lily would tell her. “Lulu!! Tell me!”

“Yeah! Did you have a baby with your muggle tattoo-maker man?” Iris asked. She pondered that. “‘Cause I think I’m okay with that. I don’t know how Daddy will feel, though.”

“Can we see the baby?” Elliot added. “And are you _sure_ it’s a girl? Only that’s disappointing because I’ve already got a fucking sister. I want a _brother_!”

“Okay. First of all, no, I did not have a baby with Lon. Second of all, Daddy would be pissed—that’s how he’d feel. Thirdly, I’ve only had two babies in my entire life, and they’re you two.”

“ _Noooo_ ,” Elliot corrected her. “You and Daddy said we have a secret half-sister.”

“And you three were being sneaky little eavesdroppers!”

“So?” Iris challenged. She crossed her arms. “We heard what we heard.”

“How can it be _half_ a sister?” Elliot pressed worriedly. He furrowed his brow so intently that his glasses slipped. He lowered his voice to a grave whisper. “What _happened_ to her?”

“I know how,” Lyra shared, excited to know something they didn’t. “A half-sister is if only the mum or the dad is the same parent, but not both. So if Elliot’s daddy was Cade but Iris’s was Papa then Iris would be your _half-sister,_ Elliot.”

Elliot paled. He slapped a hand over his mouth and looked at his sister. “Holy _fuck_!!! Iris!!! Scorpius is your dad?! Mum!!! You had a baby with Scorpius?! Does Daddy know?!”

“You _monster_ ,” Iris said, her hand over her heart and her narrowed eyes on her mum.

Lily sighed. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “For fuck’s sake. _No_ , Elliot. Iris is your _whole_ sister.”

Elliot sagged with relief. “Oh thank _God_.”

“And you know what?” Lily said. She stood. “I’ve had enough of this. C’mon, you two. We’re going to go talk to Albus and Scorpius.”

Lyra jumped up, too. “To get answers?!”

Lily took her hand in hers. “To get answers,” she promised.

Lyra threw her arms around Lily’s hips. “ _Thank you_!”

True to her word, Lily marched into the kitchen, looked right at Albus and Scorpius, and said: “We need to talk.”

“O…kay. Let’s talk,” Papa offered.

Lily gave him a pointed look. “About a certain _constellation_.”

“Ah,” said Papa uneasily. Daddy was growing red in the face.

“I know what they overheard started all of this. But it was going to have to come out eventually. You knew that, right, Albus?”

Albus didn’t reply.

“I don’t think this is fair. She feels like we’re keeping something from her. And that’s not right. I know you two get that.”

“We do,” Papa said. He looked nervously at Daddy. “But now isn’t the time for this.”

“When _is_ the time? Next week? Next year?” Lulu challenged. Lyra resisted the urge to yell _yeah!!_ in agreement.

“That’s none of your business,” Daddy said angrily. “And how dare you come in here playing the good guy!”

“I’m not playing the good guy! I’m never the good guy! Just ask my kids!” Lily shot back.

“Oh, yeah, _never_ ,” Elliot agreed.

“ _N-e-ver_ ,” Iris echoed.

“I’m just sticking up for Lyra,” Lily continued fiercely. “Because I don’t think you’re being fair to her!”

Daddy narrowed his eyes. “It isn’t _your job_ to stick up for her,” he said nastily.

“Yes it fucking is! She’s my family! That’s what family does!” Lily argued hotly.

“You’re just trying to win her over!”

“What is that even supposed to mean, Albus?! I’m trying to do the right thing!”

“The ‘right thing’ is to shut up and mind your own damn business!” Daddy yelled.

Lyra recoiled back. She had never heard Daddy sound that mean before. It shocked her.

“She _is my business_!” Lily yelled back, furious.

Lyra looked at Lulu and Daddy, her hands shaking and her face pale. She eyed Daddy’s angry and distraught expression. She looked at Lulu’s defiant expression. And she didn’t know how—but she knew. Not everything. Not even close. But enough. The large picture made sense.

“Oh,” she said, her voice small. The pieces clicked together. She looked from Papa to Lily. “ _I’m_ the secret half-sister.”

She had never heard the kitchen as quiet as it was then. There was complete and utter silence. She didn’t even think anybody was breathing. She was terribly confused. And nobody was telling her that she was wrong.

This could only mean one thing.

“Papa?” she demanded. She looked from him to her aunt. “You had a baby with _Lulu_? You are supposed to only have babies with _Daddy_! And _you_!” Lyra rounded on Lulu. “Papa is _married_! You’re married!” The longer she thought about it, the more she realized. “But if…but if you…then _I’m…”_

“It’s not like that,” Lily said at once. She seemed to be the only one who could still talk. “I didn’t have you, Lyra. Auntie Nora did and I only—”

“ _What_?! Auntie _Nora_?!?! How many of my aunts did you have babies with, Papa?! Oh, my _Muggle Gods!_ ”

“He’s a slut,” Elliot breathed.

“Elliot…” Caden sighed.

“A big, big slut,” Iris agreed from the corner of her mouth.

“Lyra, listen, pumpkin—”

“I don’t understand!” Lyra said, interrupting Daddy. Her eyes felt hot.

“Let us explain,” Papa soothed. “Do you remember how we explained that someone gave birth to you for us? Since men can’t have babies like that?”

She nodded mutely. She could feel the blood pooling in her cheeks. Her heartbeat was pounding away in her head.

“Auntie Nora did. For us. For _you_.”

Lyra shook her head, confused. She thought about when Auntie Nora was pregnant with Lou. Had she once been inside her tummy like Lou was? “But then how…?”

“Men don’t have eggs. Ladies have eggs. You didn’t know that, but now you do. Ladies have eggs inside them.”

“Like a chicken,” Elliot hissed, amazed.

“Like a _dragon_ ,” Iris corrected softly. “Wicked.”

“Men have…they have…different parts that add to the egg to make a baby,” Daddy said.

“Sperm,” Lily supplied.

“ _Lily_ ,” Daddy growled, annoyed.

“What? It’s biology, Albus.”

“So Papa and I…we both have…the other parts. But no eggs. Because we’re not ladies. So Lulu gave us one of hers so that you could be born. And Papa gave…the other part. And they put that egg in Auntie Nora. And she carried you. And then you were born and you’ve been with us ever since.”

Lyra stared at him. “That…does not sound true.”

“Well, it is,” Daddy said miserably. He shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

Lyra was struggling to understand. “So…I have two dads and two mums?”

“No,” Daddy said. “You have a biological dad and a biological mum and a surrogate mum and one me.”

Lyra blinked. “One Daddy,” she corrected.

“Right. One Daddy.”

“And…I’m the twins’ half-sister. ‘Cause Lulu…” Lyra trailed off, too stunned to finish her sentence.

“Aw _man_!” Elliot groaned, annoyed. “She’s definitely a girl and I wanted a secret brother!”

“Hush, you,” Caden chided.

Lyra had no idea what to say. She wasn’t sure what to think. Nobody else seemed to know either. Finally, Lily broke the awkward silence.

“So…surprise!” she tried.

“Shut up, Lily,” Albus muttered.

She saluted Albus. “Shutting the fuck up.”

“Well? Lyra? What do you think? Are you okay?” Papa asked hesitantly.

She looked up at him. “I have a daddy, a papa, a…sir-whole-get—”

“Surrogate,” Papa provided.

“Sur…ogate mummy, and an…egg mummy?” she said.

“Ugh,” Lily muttered under her breath. “I hate that word.”

“Basically, yeah.” Daddy lowered his face into his hands and buried his fingers in his hair.

Lyra pondered it more. “And Auntie Nora is my surrogate mummy.”

“Yes.”

“And Auntie Lulu is my egg mummy.”

“ _Ughhhh,”_ Lily groaned. “Can’t you call me something else, kid?”

“Yes,” Papa said.

Lyra took a deep breath. She sorted her thoughts carefully and put them into words. “So I’m like everybody’s baby.”

Daddy looked up. He looked a bit surprised. “Oh. Well. I never really thought of it that way. I guess so.”

Lyra’s heart felt sort of warm. “I think it’s lucky ‘cause guess what? I already love Auntie Nora and Auntie Lulu. What if the surrogate mummy and egg mummy were strangers and they were mean and I didn’t like them?”

“Er…yeah. I didn’t think of that either.”

“And Auntie Nora and Auntie Lulu like me. And maybe strangers wouldn’t like me.”

“They would,” Papa and Daddy chorused at once.

Lyra nodded. “Auntie Nora takes me to ballet and we paint and we have so much fun. Auntie Lulu does my nails and tells me funny stories. I see them all the time. I’m glad it’s them.”

Papa looked relieved. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t feel…upset or confused?”

“I don’t think so,” Lyra said. In truth, she felt a bit relieved. It could’ve been a much worse secret that they were hiding from her. And anyway, this made sense to her the more she thought about it as if somehow she’d always known deep down.

“If you have any more questions about it, or if you just want to talk, you can _always_ talk to Daddy and me,” Papa told her. Lyra nodded; she knew that.

“All that drama you created Al and look? She’s just fine with it,” Lily said. She brushed her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, how could she not be? She’s got fabulous genes.”

Lyra giggled, amused. Albus turned to look at Caden.

“Can you get your wife out of here before I murder her?” he requested.

“And miss out on a show?” he shot back. He turned to look at the twins. “How do you two feel about this?”

Elliot shrugged. “So she’s an egg mummy. Big deal. This secret is sort of boring because it doesn’t change anything! She’s still our everything mummy. Egg and tummy and everything. I know ‘cause I seen the photos when we were in her tummy and she looked _giant_.”

“That’s how come I’m _never_ having kids,” Iris said solemnly.

“Mm, I hear you,” Lily teased, knocking her now-empty wine glass against Iris’s glass. Iris laughed.

“A better secret is that we’ve got secret muggle siblings who own a dog business and they live with about a hundred dogs and when we find out about them they come to live with us, bringing their hundred dogs, and then we all live happily ever after and the dogs sleep in my bed with me,” Elliot mused.

“Dream big, El.”

Elliot sighed longingly.

“Or that Mummy and Daddy are secret spies,” Iris added. “And we never knew but we’re spies too and—”

“Okay, we get it. Not impressed by the big secret. We’ll do better next time.”

Iris reached out and patted her mum’s thigh. “I know you can do it if only you try.”

Lyra heard Papa snort. Lily reached out and grabbed Iris by her calves, lifting her up into the air so she was hanging upside down. Iris shrieked.

“This kid is all yours, Caden. Remove her and her cheekiness,” Lily ordered. She passed Iris over to Cade. He looked down at her solemnly.

“I’m afraid the cheekiness can’t be removed.”

“Ha, ha! That’s what you _get_!” Iris chanted.

“Ha, ha!” Elliot echoed. “Ha!”

Iris—still being held upside down by her legs—exerted every bit of her strength to try and lift herself up and grab onto her dad’s hands. After narrowly missing two times, Elliot stepped behind her, set his hands on her back, and helped lift her up so she could grab Cade’s hands. The two laughed a bit maniacally once she’d succeeded; she climbed up to sit on his shoulders afterwards.

Lyra looked up at Papa and Daddy. She shook her head. “They are weird. I don’t think I’m going to claim them.”

Daddy leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Wise.”

* * *

 

They didn’t forget her eyesight potion that night. She took it, set her glasses nicely on her bedside table, and then curled up under her covers with her eyes clothes until the potion set in. While she snuggled up with her unicorn, Papa read her books and she watched the pictures the words created inside her mind.

“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” Daddy said.

Lyra tested it. Sure enough, the light from the candles on the wall didn’t make her head burn with pain. She scooted up and rested her head against Daddy’s arm. She yawned.

“Lyra?” asked Daddy. Papa paused his reading and looked over at Daddy. Lyra did, too.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I never meant to lie to you. You know that, right? I was…well, I was scared to tell you. I guess I felt like…like maybe…maybe you would wish Lulu was your real parent and not me.”

Lyra had never heard anything crazier in her entire life. She sat up and looked at Daddy with wide eyes. “What! Are you _mad_ , Daddy?”

Papa laughed loudly. Daddy frowned.

“I love Lulu. She is funny and look what she does to my nails,” Lyra showed her nails off for the millionth time. “But you’re my daddy.”

“Told you,” Papa sang to Daddy.

Lyra wrapped her arms around her dad. “You’re my very very best friend.”

Daddy looked flattered. “Oh. Really? More so than Mae?”

“Of _course_ ,” Lyra said. Her daddy was her _daddy_. He took care of her and he took her fun places and he cooked for her and he always gave her extra dessert. Nothing changed that. This was her home and Daddy and Papa were her parents and she would never, ever want to live anywhere else with anybody else. She wasn’t sure how to say that, though.

Daddy wrapped her up in his arms. “And you’re my pumpkin. I love you so much. Papa and I wished so hard for you…we all did so much to bring you here. And we couldn’t be happier.”

Lyra beamed into his shirt.


	19. III. Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Den gets some chaotic visitors. Harry struggles with letting go of the reins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a minute since I posted...I honestly didn't think I'd be continuing this story as I fell into a different fandom, but I opened the document for this chapter a few weeks ago (I left it half-finished a while back) and got inspired to complete it. I don't know if anybody is still hanging around, but if you are, I'm sorry for the ridiculously long wait!

“Well, that’s pretty much it for this particular counterjinx— until we get to nonverbal wandwork, anyway. Don’t forget—” his students were already clambering loudly around the room, gathering bags, parchment, and quills while chatting with classmates, effectively drowning out Harry’s words—“DON’T FORGET ABOUT YOUR ESSAYS DUE NEXT TIME I SEE YOU AND _PLEASE DO NOT_ USE THE LOCKHART BOOK IN THE LIBRARY AS A REFERENCE AND—oh, just go on, then.” 

Harry retreated behind his desk and waited as the students—eager to get to lunch—fled the room. As soon as the vast majority had left, the classroom was quiet again, and Harry was left with only two students: his granddaughter and his godson’s son. He smiled. 

“You both did a wonderful job,” he praised them. Evra had been the best in her year at it thus far, and he wasn’t only thinking that just because she was his first grandchild. He felt she had a natural knack for it just as he had. “What did you think?”

“It’s hard,” Remus said at once. 

“I liked it!” Evra beamed. 

“I like it, too, it’s just hard,” Remus amended, a slight pout on his lips. 

Harry laughed. He stood up from behind his desk and walked over to them. 

“Let’s walk to lunch,” he offered. The two set off towards the door and Harry followed. “The first time trying any spell is always a bit difficult, but you two are off to a good start.” 

Evra grabbed onto Harry’s hand and beamed. “Did you see me knock Isla right off her feet?!” 

Harry smiled down at her. “I did. You’re a natural at all of this. I know exactly who you get it from.” 

Evra laughed. “Yeah!! Ginny!” 

Harry blinked. “Er…right. Yeah. That’s what I was going to say.”

He guessed everything paled in comparison to Ginny’s bat-boogey hex. It _was_ rather impressive even after all these years. 

“Or maybe you get it from Harry,” Remus finally mused a few minutes later. He looked up at Harry. “Harry, you were _great_ at Defense Against the Dark Arts. That’s why you’re the professor now and why you had your own club!”

Harry—having excepted the conversation to turn to Voldemort well before this point—was so taken aback to have his job and amateur club cited as proof for his proficiency in DADA rather than the events from when he was seventeen that he wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t matter; the kids continued their conversation easily without his input. 

“My dad is good at it, too,” Evra said. “But he’s _best_ at Transfiguration. I hope I’m good at it like he is.”

“My mum’s best at Divination,” Remus shared. A pause. “Though I don’t care much about being good at it, too. It’s sort of creepy.”

The two chatted idly about everybody’s areas of magical talent. The conversation turned to Ginny’s bat-boogey as they neared the Great Hall. And honestly, he never could’ve imagined that one day he’d be walking his granddaughter into the Great Hall while discussing Ginny Weasley’s bat-boogey hexes, Voldemort’s influence on his life a mere footnote in history and no longer the main defining feature of his life or identity. It was an odd feeling. It was a _freeing_ feeling. And as he stepped into the Great Hall—a grandfather, a professor, a father, a husband, but maybe not as much _The Boy Who Lived_ as he’d once been—he caught himself smiling. 

He hastily shoved the Ministry letter underneath the desk at the sound of his office door opening. He had expected a student, but when a familiar flowery scent wafted throughout the room, he raised his expectations. 

“Professor Potter,” his wife greeted, a feigned whine in her tone. She walked over and collapsed down into the chair in front of his desk with the air of an annoyed teenager. She crossed her arms over her chest for good measure. “I don’t understand why you gave me such bad marks on my essay. I did at least one-third of the assignment!” 

Harry—feeling a bit too guilty over the letter in his lap to indulge her banter—gave a halfhearted laugh. “Oh, Merlin, don’t—you’ll give me flashbacks to last year.” 

He had had an unusual amount of trouble with last year’s seventh years. They had been a remarkably lazy, irresponsible, and ornery bunch who had resisted every assignment he ever gave them every single year. 

Ginny gave him a pleading look. “Isn’t there _something_ I can do to fix my marks, Professor?”

He was a bit distracted. He had half his mind on tucking the letter underneath his desk and out of sight. “There’s always a solution to every problem, sure…” he couldn’t get the edges of the letter to bend right to wedge it where he’d wanted. His frustration must’ve shown on his face. 

His wife dropped her teasing façade. Her eyes—previously widened with flirty faux innocence—narrowed into suspicious slits. “What do you have under there?” 

He slowly slid the letter beneath his thigh. “Under where?” 

She arched an eyebrow. “Are you getting naughty in your old age? Do you have a copy of _Wizard Fantasy_?” 

“I’m as naughty as you’ll let me be,” he dismissed. He attempted to change the subject. “This is late in the day for a lunch break. Everything okay?” 

“Yeah, just fancied seeing my husband is all. Why? Want to be alone with your magazine?” 

“It’s _not_ —” he stopped abruptly. There was no point in lying to her. “It’s a letter.”

Her face remained impassive. “A letter. Okay. From whom? About what?” 

“From Young.” 

“Albus’s boss Young?” 

“Yeah.” He dropped his eyes to his lap. “About their new leads on the kidnapping case.” 

It didn’t take long for her voice to gain that familiar edge of disapproval. “Harry.” 

“I know.” 

“Clearly you don’t. I thought you were done obsessing over that.” 

“So did I. But I just feel like I’ve missed something. I feel like they’ve all missed something. It’s nagging me.” 

“ _I’m_ going to be nagging you in about two seconds. I understand it. You know I do.” He did. She had always understood him in ways nobody else had. “And that’s part of the reason it worries me so much. Because I know how much it’s eating at you. But you need to hear me when I say that it’s _not_ your responsibility.”

He knew that it wasn’t his responsibility. But that didn’t stop him from feeling that way. 

“I just wanted to know if they’d had anymore leads. That’s all,” he defended himself. 

“Then why are you hiding it underneath your leg all guiltily?” 

“Because I knew you’d be ill with me!” 

“I’m not ill. Trust me. You know if I was ill,” she said flatly. “I just don’t want you spiraling out like you did last year.”

“I didn’t _spiral out_ ,” he scoffed. 

She gave him a deadpanned look. “You went nearly two entire days without sleeping because you went straight from this job to the Ministry to do somebody _else’s_ job.” 

He couldn’t refute that because it was true. “I felt like I had to do something.” 

Her voice softened. “I know you did. And you did do something. You did everything you could. But that child is gone, Harry. There’s nothing more you can do.”

He didn’t respond. He thought about the thousands of posters that had adorned every lamppost, shop wall, and street sign in their wizarding community for a year after the child was taken. Something in his little smile had reminded Harry of his grandchildren. Maybe that was why it’d been so hard to let go. 

“I just want to know what happened,” he admitted quietly. One thing their world had very little of was kidnapping. Harry could count the number of times it’d happened to his knowledge on one hand. It was a crime he wasn’t desensitized to, a crime that hit very close to home as a father and a grandfather. A crime that reminded him just how unpredictable and awful the world could really be. “I was just checking for an update. Honest.” 

She gave him a wary look. “Okay. If you say so. Just…don’t let it get out of control again, okay? Think about our kids.”

Harry furrowed his brow. “Gin, our kids don’t even live with us, they—” he stopped. _Oh my God._ “You’re…talking about the animals, aren’t you?” 

“Of course I am,” she said softly, a hand pressed over her heart in faux injury. “Who else would I be talking about?”

“Er…maybe our actual _human_ children?” 

Ginny waved her hand carelessly. “Nah, they’re fine. It’s our animals who need us. Though, just so you know, I am _not_ watching Lulu’s twins alone, so if you’re planning on having a mental breakdown or something, you’re seriously going to have to reschedule.” 

Harry furrowed his brow. “Alone? Why would you have to watch them alone? They’ve got parents.”

“Parents who have quite the busy little social lives this month. We’ve got a lot of babysitting ahead of us. Which is good; I’ve been waiting and waiting to have Iris and Elliot here with us. But I don’t particularly want to try and deal with them alone.”

Harry’s expression was slowly overtaken by a sly grin. “Are you frightened of our five-year-old grandchildren?” He felt his heart swell with affection at the thought of their mischievous little grins. 

“Frightened? No. Intimidated by? A _bit,_ Harry. _A bit_. They’re very high-maintenance,” admitted Ginny. “You leave James’s lot alone in a room for an hour and everything’s more or less the same when you walk back in…Evra will inevitably fix all the chaos Finnigan causes so it just balances itself back out. If you leave Lyra alone for an hour she’ll just be reading when you walk back in, though Albus and Scorpius will have your head for abandoning her. But if you leave Lily’s kids alone in a room for an hour…they’re long gone—probably in a different country—somebody’s probably dead, and something’s certainly burning. I still haven’t forgotten our babysitting experience last Christmas.”

Harry winced. “Ah, yeah. That poor muggle policeman. He was so confused.” 

Ginny shook her head. “The Natural History Museum will never be the same. You take your eyes off those two for _one second_ and suddenly they’ve levitated themselves on top of a blue whale skeleton.”

Harry rubbed his forehead, haunted. “God that was a miserable day.”

“ _Awful._ Just _awful_ ,” Ginny agreed. “Hence my refusal to babysit the two of them without your help. I had to watch Lily alone many times when she was young and I already decided you’re _not_ doing _that_ to me again. The twins are like Lily squared, only I think they might be slightly craftier than she was.” 

“I’d never do that to you,” Harry reassured her. He lifted the letter up again. “I’m fine. I’m not going to go off the rails or anything like that. I just wanted to know if they’d discovered anything else, but they haven’t, so that’s that. Here.” In a show of confidence, he slid the letter across his desk for his wife to confiscate. She leaned forward and took it. “I’m here and one-hundred percent on board for whatever hilarious trouble the twins have plotted out for this visit.”

“Good,” Ginny nodded. “Because starting tonight Lily and her lot will be staying at our house. It’s our turn. And I spoke with Albus this morning; apparently, despite the continued rows Lyra and Elliot keep getting into, Lyra’s quite torn up that they won’t be staying at her house anymore during their visit, so we may end up with Lyra over some nights, too.”

Harry couldn’t stop from smiling. He adored how close all his grandchildren were; it’s what he’d always hoped for. “I thought she and Elliot would have killed each other by now.”

“So did I, but apparently they’ve all gotten on rather well—well for them, I mean. There was that incident with Elliot messing up Lyra’s books and Lyra trying to kick his face, but— eh.” Ginny shrugged, unimpressed. 

Harry waved it off. “A kick to the face is child’s play. I’ll be worried when there’s stabbings or arson.”

Ginny nodded. “I don’t blame them for getting ill with each other. It’s a lot to ask having those two families cooped up together under one roof…there are some definite personality clashes.” 

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Speaking of personality clashes…have Lily and Albus been getting along?”

“I think for the most part, though Lyra reported an argument between the two last week.” Ginny sighed. “Still—no one has been transfigured into a wild beast or bloodied up, so there’s that. All quiet on the western front so far this week.”

“Look at that,” Harry commented, amazed. “Miracles do happen.”

Ginny refolded the flap of the letter idly as she responded. “I think that ‘miracle’ is called ‘Caden and Scorpius’. I guarantee the two have been on appeasement duty all week.”

“Well, whatever you call it, I’m just glad they’re sort of friends now.”

“I’d drink to that. Really. I’d drink to that. That’s why I came. Want to go get drinks at the Hog’s Head?” she asked. She checked her watch. “We’ve got time to get a nice little buzz before the twins arrive. I think we may need it.”

Harry glanced over at the foot-high stack of essays and assignments he needed to mark. Ugh. Forget all that. Tomorrow was Saturday. He’d just catch up then. He’d make a day of it; sometimes he could even talk his kids into helping him and that significantly cut down on the time it took. 

“Yep. Absolutely. Let’s go.”

He crossed over and stood in front of her seat. He reached down for her hands and pulled her to her feet. Her lips tasted oddly cinnamony as he leaned in and kissed her. He pulled back a bit and grinned at her. “You taste like Christmas.” 

“Do I?” She mimed preening by smoothing her hair back haughtily. “Why thank you.” 

He narrowed his eyes slightly. He let his arms fall to loop around her waist. “You’ve been at Hugo’s bakery without me,” he accused.

“And I ate _three_ Chelsea buns.”

He scoffed. “And you didn’t bring me one back?! In some societies, that’s grounds for divorce.”

“Divorce me, then,” she said. She leaned in and rose up on her tiptoes so their mouths were nearly touching. “Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley back on the market. It’ll all be terribly exciting for the press. Maybe I’ll date the Puddlemere Beater.”

Harry squinted at her. “Which one?” 

Her eyes twinkling, she said: “Naomi.”

Harry pressed a hand over his heart like he’d just suffered a genuine blow to his chest. “You’re a wicked woman.”

“A wicked woman…who’s back on the market.” She gave him a thumbs-up and grinned cheekily. He reached out and folded her thumbs back down. 

“You are not. Stop that.”

“Grump. You’re a grumpy granddad. You need some alcohol in you.”

He really just needed some time alone with her more than the alcohol, but he was happy to play along. 

“You know they’re going to print that in _Witch Weekly_ by tomorrow, right?” snorted Harry. He watched as Ginny pulled her hair free from the collar of her coat and fastened it all the way up against the chill. They stepped out of the Hog’s Head and looped arms. Bright laughter spilled from Ginny’s lips. 

“Certainly. It’s a social statement. Grandparents have still got it.” 

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure a photo of you snogging me is a social statement.” 

“Sure it is. And if photographers want to invade our privacy, I’ll do my best to make them uncomfortable in the process. And I think he _was_ uncomfortable,” she mused. 

“Our grandkids are going to see that.”

Ginny shrugged. “So we love each other, big deal.”

Harry looked down at her in amusement as she dragged him down the Hogsmeade pavement. “You remember when Lily flashed that spying reporter in the middle of her wedding ceremony right before he snapped a photo so that they couldn’t print it? And you were all ‘Lily, that was quick and ingenious thinking, but that’s going to follow you forever?’” 

Ginny inclined her head. “Right. I remember. Nobody is likely to ever forget…the heavily-edited photos will live on in infamy. I’ve never been so proud.”

“Well, stones and glass houses. Stones and glass houses, Gin. She’s your spitting image.”

“Is not.”

“Is so. You just stuck your tongue down my throat in public to spite the press. How’s that any different from what Lily did?” 

“Well, Lily did what she did because she knew the Decency Laws would prevent the photographer from printing any photo that was deemed indecent without massive amounts of editing and altering, which prevented the wizarding public from seeing clear photos of her private wedding ceremony that that reporter illegally snuck into in the first place, whereas I know that they can still print the photos they took—it just made the photographer feel awkward, and his discomfort is very comfortable to me.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re _worse_ than our daughter.”

“Weasley-Potter women age like a fine wine and get stronger and more concentrated with time.”

He nodded. “So…you’re worse than our daughter.”  

Ginny knocked her side into his. “She’s got some more work to do until she’s at the same level of ‘fuck the press’ as I am.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Don’t _ever_ say that around her. She’ll take it as a challenge. And I’d rather never, ever, _ever_ see her flash anybody ever again if it’s all the same to you.”

“Fair. Merlin, what a lovely day that was. What an entertaining wedding. Drama notwithstanding, I found it delightful.”

Harry grinned. “Yeah, it was great. Iris and Elliot stole the show.”

“Oh, without a doubt. When else do you get to see twin toddlers ride down a wedding aisle on a miniature dragon’s back?”

“Or find them huddled under a table with that dragon eating the entire stolen wedding cake,” Harry snickered. 

Ginny laughed loudly. “I’d almost forgotten about that! Hugo was so angry. He spent _ages_ on that cake.”

“He really did. It was gorgeous. Poor Hugo.”

“I really feel like we got to see it all with the kids’ weddings. James and Nora’s was so quaint and warm; I swear everybody who went was smiling for a week afterwards. Albus and Scorpius’s was ridiculously elaborate and gorgeous. Nobody could ever top it. Say what you will about Draco, but the man can plan a damn wedding.” 

“Yeah, I’ll allow him that.”

“And then we got Lily and Caden’s, which was objectively the oddest but coolest ceremony I’ve ever been to, yet incredibly emotional at the same time…or maybe the butterbeer Roxanne spiked just made me remember it that way…”

“No,” Harry said at once. He felt a brief sting of the extreme emotion that had flooded his heart that day. He had definitely cried in the loo at least once, though he’d never admitted that to anyone. For weeks afterwards, the memory of his daughter’s smile after she’d said ‘I do’ had made him teary. “It was special without the spiked butterbeer.”

“I definitely think the butterbeer had something to do with it, though. We were all sloshed.”

“Especially James.”

“ _Especially_ James,” Ginny sniggered. “That was the first time I’d seen him actually use his animagus abilities in eight years.”

“Poor Nora. I’ve never seen an elk vomit before. Fascinating.”

She laughed loudly and he grinned back at her. He was thinking fondly of their shared life together—about every life and circumstance that had arisen from that very first kiss they’d shared in the Gryffindor Common Room—when he felt Ginny’s arm wrap around his waist. Her soft, warm hand slipped underneath the edge of his shirt so that her palm was pressed against his side. He gripped her closely in return, his heart swelling with affection.  

“You ever think about how all these little people exist just because I hopelessly fancied my best mate’s little sister?” 

“Oh yeah. Three children and eleven grandchildren at the current standing. All because I was terribly hot,” she teased. 

“ _Are_ terribly hot,” he corrected lightly. There was no need to clarify her teasing. She was well aware that the list of things he loved about her started with much more than her appearance. 

Something she said made him look at her with interest. “‘At the current standing?’” he quoted curiously. “I thought Nora and James were strongly urged not to have any more babies after all her complications with Lou?” 

Ginny nodded. “Oh, yeah, they’re done in that sense of it. But James never will give me a straight answer when I ask about adoption so they very well may end up adopting more eventually. They’re mad for it, really, but what can you do?” 

“Nothing. Dean and Seamus learned that the hard way.”

“Right. I wasn’t talking about them actually, though.”

Harry furrowed his brow, concerned suddenly. “Didn’t Lily have herself sterilized after the twins? You’re telling me she _didn’t?_ I adore her, I do, but I’m not so sure about her having any more kids…seems like they only barely manage to keep the ones they’ve got alive as it is…”

Ginny laughed loudly at the mere idea. “Oh, Merlin, no! She’s not having anymore—you can count on that. I’m talking about Albus and Scorpius, Harry.”

Harry blinked, surprised. “Oh. Oh. Okay.” A pause. His brain worked through that statement. “Well, how’s that work, then?” 

“They could adopt. They could do the surrogacy thing again with another witch. I dunno. I got this weird feeling last time I was over there…Lyra made an off-handed comment about wanting a sibling and Scorpius got this _look_ in his eyes…well, think about it this way: when’s the last time Lyra wanted something and her dads didn’t deliver it?” 

Harry thought. And thought. And thought. But every whim Lyra had ever voiced had been met and then some (even the time she’d requested a pony. It lived at Malfoy Manor.)

“You’ve got a point there. If Lyra’s asking for a brother or sister, Lyra’s going to get a brother or sister.” 

“Exactly. And I’m actually not sure how I feel about it,” admitted Ginny. 

That surprised Harry. He slowed their pace and looked down at her. From behind them, a huffy group of twenty-somethings brushed past them, clearly in a hurry to get into the apothecary. Harry stepped to the side so they were out of the walkway and pulled Ginny alongside him. 

“Really?” he finally asked, intrigued. “Gin, you’ve been ‘anti-only-child’ from the start. Literally. The first conversation we _ever_ had about kids was you warning me ahead of time that you would not do the ‘only child’ thing. I remember you looking me dead in the eye—a terrified, nervous twenty year old boy—and telling me that if I was thinking about having a kid with you one day, I’d better make sure I wanted _kids_ , because you didn’t believe it was fair to have a child and not give them a brother or a sister. And, as it happened, I agreed with you. I still do. I know what it was like to grow up without siblings. I saw how much better your life was because of all yours. I always wanted that for our kids. And we gave it to them. They may bicker sometimes and their personalities might clash, but they’ve got each other forever. They are their own unit of family and shared history and it’s something irreplaceable, something that means more than anything else, and so I guess I’m really confused as to why you’re suddenly…pro-only-child.”

Ginny blinked. She reached up and brushed his messy hair out of his face; he knew he needed another haircut. “An impressive speech, Professor Potter. You’re passionate about this.” 

“You _used_ to be, too.”

“I still am. Mostly. It’s just…well, think about it. Lyra has been the only star in their sky for her entire life. And I’m not using that comparison to be soppy and gross…that’s precisely what it’s like and you know it. Her dads’ lives revolve around her totally and completely. I’m not so sure she’d like it—having somebody else in her limelight. I’m not sure Albus and Scorpius would, either. People get so set in their ways.”

He hadn’t considered that. “That’s true. It would be a big change.” A pause. “Don’t ever say ‘only star in their sky’ ever again, please.”

She elbowed him sharply in the ribs. He laughed. 

“It’ll be a tough decision,” she mused, as they resumed their walk back towards Hogwarts. “One thing’s for certain, anyway: no matter what, Christmases are getting very crowded.”

Harry’s heart widened. For a moment, despite all the years removed from his past, he found himself thinking about Christmas mornings at Privet Drive, mornings where he’d lurked in the cupboard under the stairs while Dudley opened presents with shouts of glee Harry had been certain he’d never experience. And now Christmases were full of family: his grandchildren hugging him close, his children laughing with him, his wife and her blazing eyes. He preferred the claustrophobia of a house too full of people to the claustrophobia of being locked underneath the stairs. 

“I love it,” he said fiercely. 

“Yeah, I do, too,” she grinned. She was still smiling as she tugged on his hand and resumed pulling him down the street. Her smile faltered slightly as she glanced back up at him. “I don’t love the cleanup, though.”

“Eugh,” Harry agreed. 

* * *

 

Harry and Ginny met Hermione, James, Rose, and Albus at the small cafe inside the Ministry Atrium later that afternoon. Rose was so busy that she drank her tea and talked with an obscenely long bit of parchment held in front of her face for half the time, Hermione was rushed and left after only ten minutes for an emergency meeting, James was currently burdened with some random baby that had been ditched inside a Surrey flat until the very few—and overworked—members of his staff could locate the right foster home for it, and Albus was surlier than usual (a feat), but Harry still enjoyed every moment. Things never really seemed to slow down; in his young adulthood, he had thought that once he was older and retired from the Ministry that he’d have a plethora of unrushed days to enjoy his family. But he’d really only had a few sparse years, because not long after he’d reached that point, his own kids had entered _their_ young adulthoods, and they were the ones with the busy schedules. Part of him felt like it was payback for all the time he’d missed when they were growing up. 

Harry and Ginny returned to work. It passed quickly enough; Harry’s last class of the day— the sixth years— was made up of such intensely difficult children that there was hardly a dull moment. He was emotionally exhausted come the end of his work day. He set his head down on his desk for a moment and didn’t lift it again ’til he heard the Floo _whoosh_ to life. He looked up. 

“Lulu,” he smiled. He waited, but no little ones followed after her. “Where are the twins?” 

Lily collapsed in one of Harry’s office armchairs with a scowl. “They’re at home being rather unlikeable. Caden’s dealing with them. I need a break.” 

Harry thought about the sixth years and scowled, too. “My afternoon lot was rather unlikeable, too. How about we get some coffee and see whose kids were more annoying?” 

He’d had tea earlier that afternoon, but his exhaustion and raging headache told him coffee might do him good. 

Lily perked up at the idea. “Yeah, okay. I’m supposed to be picking up some clothes from Aster at her shop— her Hogsmeade one, not the Diagon Alley one— so we can go to the coffee shop right beside it. I need to pick something up for Caden’s birthday this weekend, too."

Harry peered at her with feigned injury. “Oh, so you were Hogsmeade-bound all along? You didn’t come all this way just to see your dad?” 

“If I was Hogsmeade bound, I’d be in Hogsmeade right now,” Lily scoffed. She pulled her glasses off and rubbed at the lenses with the hem of her shirt. Harry gestured for them immediately. It bothered him when she cleaned them improperly. She continued speaking as he pulled the cleaning cloth from his desk and set to work getting rid of the twins’ smudged fingerprints, dust, dirt, and whatever else had gotten on the dirty lenses. 

“Iris was arguing with me and she screamed ‘I want my _daddy_!’— as in, get lost, Mum— and that should have hurt my feelings, but instead, I yelled back ‘me too!’ and that’s how I realized I miss you. You’ve been working a lot; I feel like I’ve hardly seen you since I got here. Mum says you’ve been working at the Ministry some?”

Harry was so touched that his daughter missed him that he didn’t even care that Ginny was probably making snarky comments about his obsession with the kidnapping case. 

“Sort of. Just one case, really. I’m done now, though, so I’ll be around the entire time you’re staying at the Den. You’ll get sick of me in a few days.”

“Probably,” she shrugged. “And you’ll get sick of me.”

“Probably,” he echoed. But he was certain that would never happen. He missed her so much all the time. That never changed. 

* * *

 

“So how’s it been at Albus’s now that the cat’s out of the bag so to speak?” Harry asked. Albus hadn’t said much about it so far— about Lyra knowing the truth behind her parentage—but Harry guessed things weren’t too explosive because Albus and Lily hadn’t killed each other brutally. 

Lily snorted. She sat down at one of the little cafe tables; Harry did the same. 

“Albus is going above and beyond to prove himself ‘dad of the year’ to validate his paternity—as if he needs to do that. He’s so fucking annoying. Did you know that he hand-washes all _twenty-eight_ of Lyra’s stuffed toys in the bathtub? Hand-washes. Muggle hand-washing. Because he’s terrified cleaning charms will be ‘too harsh’.” 

Harry resisted the urge to laugh. The anecdote wasn’t as funny as Lily’s hilariously disgusted expression. “Yeah, I actually did know that. Ginny made the mistake of cleaning Hypatia with magic. I thought Lyra’s head was going to explode when she found out.”

Lily sighed. “That girl’s as soft as a marshmallow. It just proves that nurture is stronger than nature.”

“Eh,” Harry said. “I think they’re pretty even players. You’re not thinking about Lyra when she’s angry.” Her face turned bright red just as Lily’s did. They even furrowed their brows in identical ways. It was something Harry—as Lily’s father—never failed to notice. 

“She’s not that bad. Well, up until this week, anyway. She and Elliot have been driving us all mad. Ever since the twins found out that Lyra’s from my egg—and sort of their biological half-sister in a way—Elliot has been teasing Lyra by calling her ‘Little Sister’.”

“But Elliot’s younger than Lyra.”

“Oh, I know. He does it to aggravate her off when they’re arguing. And it does—so much. She gets _furious_. She absolutely despises it. One of these days she’s going to snap and punch him right in the face. It’ll serve him right.”

Harry laughed. “Some protective mum you are.”

There was a short lapse in the conversation as the waiter dropped their coffee off. Lily took two sips of her cappuccino before saying: “That kid came from me. I know him better than anybody else. And I know when he’s just asking to get a slap.”

“Hopefully the break will do them some good and they can end the visit on a more positive note,” Harry suggested. 

Lily didn’t look convinced. Harry doctored his drink up with more sugar. The bell above the door jingled as another customer stepped in, bringing a burst of frigid air with her. Harry drew his opened cloak closed against the chill. He seemed to get colder and colder the older he got; he wondered if that was normal. As he mulled the changes age had brought, he noticed Lily’s eyes following the new arrival as the person walked over and sank down at a seat on the other side of the small room. Harry turned, halfway expecting it to be one of Lily’s former classmates due to the flash of recognition he saw on her face briefly, but the new arrival appeared to be a couple of years older than Harry himself. She turned to face forward at the bar, leaving Harry with only her profile to examine. She didn’t look familiar to him. She had blond hair that had clearly been treated with grey-removal potion; a few patches near the back were still a bit silver, which usually happened because the residual effects of the potion would rub off against one’s pillow during the night. She had an unremarkable face: vacantly pretty, with too-dark lipstick applied carefully to her full lips and wrinkles framing her light eyes. Harry saw nothing of interest there, but when he looked back at his daughter, she was still watching the woman carefully, her eyes darting back every few seconds. 

“I think Elliot’s terribly sweet,” Harry said carefully, his eyes on Lily’s reaction. “A sweet angel.”

“Mmhmm,” Lily agreed absently. 

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Clearly the best behaved child in the entire family. He speaks to adults with such respect.”

“Right,” Lily said.

Harry set his cup down. “What’s got you so distracted?” 

Her brown eyes shifted back to Harry’s. “I’m not,” she said. She lied well. She took another sip of her coffee. “I think the coffee in the new Diagon Alley shop is slightly better, don’t you?” 

She was only half-present the rest of the time. Harry didn’t bother forcing conversation. They drank their coffee in companionable silence while Lily appeared to think deeply. Harry knew something was bothering her, but he knew better than to pry. He had thought the woman in the restaurant was the culprit, but even after she left Lily kept on peering off, her lips pursed together as she thought. 

They had planned on running by a few shops afterwards—Lily had to pick up something she’d ordered for Caden’s birthday that weekend and Harry needed to pick something up for him, too—but Lily backed out as soon as they walked from the coffee shop. 

“I’m not feeling too well,” she said distractedly. “Can we shop tomorrow?” 

Harry furrowed his brow. “Are you okay?” 

“‘Course. Just got a headache is all and I need to get those clothes from Aster and go home. Maybe I can get an hour of peace without Elliot and Lyra bickering… _maybe…”_

Harry knew without a doubt that something was wrong. But he also knew— without a doubt— that she didn’t want to talk about whatever it was. 

“All right. I hope you feel better. Just think— starting tonight you’ll be at the Den for the rest of your visit and there won’t be any Lyra and Elliot arguing to worry about, and your mum and I will be able to help more.”

She nodded. “I’ll try to remember that. Thanks for the coffee, Dad.”

“Sure,” he agreed. He folded her into his arms and hugged her tightly. Their hugs never lasted long enough. 

* * *

 

The third crash in a span of five minutes drew a frustrated groan from between his lips. 

“Okay,” he growled to Ginny, his eyes darting from his scampering grandchildren to the broken glass on the kitchen floor. “Maybe I _don’t_ love full houses.”

Ginny withdrew her wand and cleaned up the shattered mess. After that, she swung her hair over her shoulder and set off after the grandchildren. 

“OI! YOU LOT! YOU BETTER STOP RUNNING THROUGH THE HOUSE LIKE FRIGHTENED HIPPOGRIFFS OR ELSE—” another loud crash, this time followed by shrieking. “—OH, MERLIN, WHAT NOW?!” 

Harry was suffering from some extreme flashbacks. He had nearly forgotten how awful his children’s behavior had been in their earlier years, and James and Nora’s kids—sans Finnigan and often times Henry—had never really reminded him of it much. But they had ten grandchildren in the house right now, and with Lily’s kids added into the large mix, the kids were going a bit…Potter-mad. 

Harry followed the sound of shrieking. He glanced at his wristwatch as he ascended the Den stairs. Only two more hours. Two more hours. They had foolishly encouraged James and Nora, Albus and Scorpius, and Caden and Lily to go out to dinner together, thinking the siblings and in-laws could use a night out without kids for once. Lily had seemed particularly in need of a break. She had been just as stressed when they’d all come over the Den as she’d been earlier when they’d gotten coffee together. He felt she needed the break most of all, but he was now regretting offering it. 

“YOU BROKE HIS HEAD! HIS ENTIRE FUCKING HEAD!” 

Harry sighed. He stepped into the grandkids’ room— a towering addition they’d added onto the Den with four sets of bunkbeds and a double bed—and eyed the damage. Elliot was lying groaning on the floor, a huge gash across his forehead, while Iris glowered spectacularly at Benji. Benji looked floored with astonishment. 

“W-What?!” He squeaked. 

“He didn’t!” Lyra defended him. She stepped up, her brows furrowed in worry. “That wasn’t Benji’s fault!” 

“IT WAS!” Iris insisted. Harry rarely saw her lose her cool to this extreme; she was much subtler and milder than her twin, but she was very upset now. And he understood why: Elliot’s cut looked pretty bad. Ginny was moping at it gently with a conjured cloth, her lips pressed into a firm line. Harry walked up, grabbed Iris’s shoulders in case she decided to fly across the room at Benji with fists flying, and looked down at Elliot. He wasn’t crying. He was blinking up at the ceiling, stunned. 

“You all right, El?” Harry asked tentatively. 

Elliot nodded. “I think so.” He turned and looked at Ginny. “Can I have ice cream since I’m hurt?” 

Ginny pressed her wand to his wound and mended it. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead afterwards. “Maybe. C’mon, let’s go downstairs and take a little break from all this excitement.” 

He accepted her hand and climbed slowly to his feet. “A break with ice cream?” 

She laughed. “We’ll see.” 

Iris squirmed from Harry’s grasps and hurried after her twin. She grabbed his hand in hers and squinted at the spot his wound had been. They were talking quietly together as they walked from the room with Ginny…leaving Harry to deal with the fallout. 

“What happened?” He asked Lyra. 

Lyra sucked in a deep breath. “ _Well,_ ” she began, looking so much like Scorpius for a moment that it floored Harry. “We were playing Harpies and Dragons…” she trailed off. 

“Okay. Then what?” Harry prompted. 

Lyra seemed torn. She kept looking at Benji and then faltering. 

“What happened, Lyra?” Harry pressed. 

Lyra looked back up at him. Their identical eyes met. She worried her bottom lip for a moment. “I was a dragon and Iris was a dragon and Elliot was a dragon and Benji was a dragon…”

“Okay…”

She chewed her lip harder. “Dragons can fly.” 

Harry was beginning to catch on. “Right…”

“Then Benji said we should pretend fly. He and Iris pulled all the blankets and the pillows off the beds and made a soft place for us to land and we were jumping from the beds and it was terribly fun, Harry, but…”

“But?” 

She looked down at her hands and shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “But Elliot was playing too rough.” 

 _Playing too rough_ was a phrase the adults always used when Finnigan and Henry got too rambunctious around the little ones. Harry could tell it didn’t mean precisely the same thing in this context since Elliot _was_ one of the little ones. 

“What was he doing?” 

“He started jumping from the bunkbed to the other bunkbed. It was very far. I think he was using magic a bit.” 

“He may have been,” Harry said gently. “Did he try to control it to use it to _really_ fly?” 

“He said he was going to fly up to the window that’s in the ceiling. And then he tried to. But it didn’t work. And he fell very far. And he hit his head on the bunkbed rail when he fell and then he crashed to the floor and he was bleeding horribly.” Lyra looked earnestly at Harry, clearly hoping that he understood the severity of the situation. “I’m not being overdramatic this time; he really was.” 

Lyra had a way of saying such sophisticated phrases with such conviction that Harry was always torn between amusement and admiration. Under the current circumstances, however, he wasn’t feeling either of them. His mind was wracked with worry over the things that could have happened. What if Elliot had been _seriously_ injured? On his watch? When he’d only offered to watch him to make Lily less stressed in the first place? 

“He’s all better now at least,” Harry reminded her. He turned to face Benji and opened his arms. His guilty and distraught grandson flew into his embrace immediately. He cuddled him close and kissed his hair. “Why did Iris say it was your fault? Because you wanted everybody to pretend-fly?”

Benji started sobbing immediately. “Y-Y-Yes!” 

“But it sounds like Iris was helping you set it up. Wasn’t she?” 

“Y-Y-Yes!” He wailed. 

“So it sounds like it was no more your fault than hers. Don’t you let that bother you. Okay?” 

Benji nodded tearfully against Harry’s shoulder. He kissed his hair again and lifted him up; he ignored the ache that spurred in his back and his knees. “Let’s go downstairs. All of us. I’m not so sure we should be be letting you lot play unattended after all.”

“That’s a good call, Harry,” Lyra said cheerfully. She sank her hand into Harry’s. “I love my cousins, but they don’t always make good choices. That’s what Papa says.”

“Well, Papa is right,” Harry snorted. “Thank Merlin we’ve got our little voice of reason.” 

Lyra beamed happily. “Cade says I have more sense than loads of grown-ups.”

“Caden is right, too.”

When they entered the sitting room, Elliot was cuddled in Ginny’s arms like a little baby, absolutely eating up her coddling. She was rocking him in the old rocking chair and everything. Iris ordinarily would’ve been teasing her twin, but she was currently perched on the end of Ginny’s knees and eating ice cream straight from the container so she didn’t pay him much mind. Harry sighed. 

“Ginny…” 

She looked over at him somewhat guiltily. “What? A little ice cream never hurt anybody. I’ve fallen off the sugar-detox wagon and it doesn’t make any sense to get back on it ’til after Caden’s birthday…think of the cake.” 

Harry arched a brow. “I was actually talking about the fact that you’re holding a five-year-old like he’s a newborn baby.”

She cradled Elliot’s head to her shoulder and kissed his head defensively. “He got hurt.” 

Harry shook his head. “I swear your coddling gets worse and worse with every grandchild.”

She gasped, affronted. She clutched Elliot closer. He smiled into her shoulder. “But these are my little Lulu babies, Harry. I never get to see them, and they got hurt, and they _need_ coddling. They do.”

Harry looked down at Iris. “Iris didn’t get hurt.”

Around a mouthful of ice cream, she said: “Yeah, I did, I stubbed my toe real bad.”

“You liar,” Harry muttered. She waited until Ginny had looked the other way to narrow her eyes at him. He narrowed his back suspiciously.  

“Can I have some ice cream, too, Ginny?!” Lyra asked excitedly. 

Ginny patted her lap. “Of course, c’mon! You, too, Benji!” 

Harry was going to point out that she literally had no more room in her lap, but she was Ginny, and she made room. A few seconds later, all four grandkids were smushed together in her lap, their legs overlapping and their hands clamoring to reach the ice cream bucket in Iris’s hands. Harry watched as one of the Pygmy Puffs scurried up Ginny’s leg and perched almost jealously on her shoulder, too.  

“Hey!!” Finnigan shouted. He and the older grandkids— sans Evra, who was at Hogwarts— had been out in the garden playing the shed, but Harry guessed they’d finished with all that. Finnigan walked over and fell dramatically on top of the rocking chair, supported mostly by the arms of it, but partially by his four little cousins. All four succumbed to giggles. “That’s my Ginny you’re hogging!” 

Ginny’s eyes were sparkling. She stretched her arms out as far as they could go and wrapped Finnigan up in her arms as best she could. “There’s plenty of room for you!” 

“Awww,” Finnigan cooed teasingly. He collapsed back against his grandmother, causing his little cousins to shriek and laugh louder. 

“YOU’RE SQUASHING US WITH YOUR BIG BLOODY ARSE!” Iris shouted, and Harry couldn’t really tell if she was joking or not. “MOVE!”

“Squashing you? Really?” Finnigan asked innocently. He leaned even more into them. “Is this better?”

“Leave them alone, Finnigan! You stink, too!” Rory teased. She and Henry walked over and grabbed onto Finnigan’s arms to yank him off of Ginny. 

“Come help us, Harry!!!” Henry begged. “We—gotta—get—Finnigan!” 

Harry was going to do his best to assist with the Potter banter, but at that moment, he heard the littlest ones begin to cry. First Alice, then Lou. They had been napping in his and Ginny’s room, but Harry guessed they woke and didn’t appreciate being left out from the family fun. 

“I’ll get them,” Harry said eagerly. He had a soft spot for Alice; he couldn’t wait to greet her and cuddle her smiley, sleepy self. 

“Don’t leave me alone with _them,”_ Ginny teased. 

Harry appraised their cuddly, giggly set-up. “You look fine to me,” he shrugged. 

He left his wife and their grandkids giggling and teasing each other and went to retrieve the little ones. Alice was trying to climb out of her toddler bed, but she was too sleepy to maneuver her chubby little legs over the railing. Harry hoisted her up and kissed her little nose. She gripped around his neck in a tight hug and yawned. 

“Love Hawwy,” she murmured sleepily. Harry felt his heart grow. 

“Love my Allie,” he said back. 

Lou was just as pleasant, but Lou was always pleasant. He was the happiest little baby Harry had ever met. He was smiling and cooing as Harry picked him up from his cot and cradled him in his other arm. Harry kissed him, too. 

“Did you sleep well, Lou?” He asked the baby. Lou cooed again, his eyes shut and a bright smile on his face. “Looks like that’s a yes!” 

He got Lou a bottle from the ice box, got Alice a sippy cup, and carried them both into the sitting room. He stopped at once in the doorway. All the grandkids sans Lyra were jumping wildly from sofa to sofa while Ginny looked on in tired dismay. 

“That escalated quickly,” Harry commented. 

Ginny walked over to stand with him. “They were fine and then…they weren’t. I think they got a bit overexcited. I can’t decide whether I want to stop them or not…right now it’s okay, but I don’t want them to get hurt again…” 

Harry felt nervous. “I think we should stop it. Elliot already got hurt once. You know how I feel about the grandkids getting hurt on our watch.” 

“I know. Me too. OI, THAT’S ENOUGH, OFF THE FURNITURE! Go outside and play, you wild things!” 

They didn’t have to be told twice. The leapt one by one from the furniture and took off through the back door towards the garden. Harry passed Lou to Ginny and followed after them, certain it wouldn’t be a smart move to leave them unattended for long at all after what happened earlier. He and Ginny made themselves comfortable at the patio table, set Lou in one of the baby swings to the table’s left, and let Alice sit in the sand box a few feet from them, but they didn’t get to enjoy the peaceful evening for very long. 

“Oh, Merlin— ELLIOT, NO! NO! BRING THAT BROOM BACK HERE, NOW! YOU MAY NOT GO ON THE ROOF!” 

“WHY NOT?!” 

“BECAUSE IT’S NOT SAFE!” 

“MUMMY LETS ME!”

“MUMMY’S NOT HERE, IS SHE? COME BACK DOW— IRIS ADELAIDE! COME BACK! DON’T GO INTO THE FOREST! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?! Oh, I’m going to _kill them!_ They just took off into the woods towards the muggle neighbors!” 

Harry arched a brow. “Quick question: are they still your precious little Lulu babies?” 

She glared at him briefly and then looked back at the kids. “Finnigan, could you go get them, please?”

“ON IT!” 

Finnigan zoomed into the forest after the twins. The rest of the kids were indifferent to the scene, or just used to the twins’ escapades: they kept playing their game of Quidditch. It felt like a worryingly long amount of time before Finnigan returned. Harry was standing to go find the twins himself when Finnigan burst back through the trees, the grumpy Rowle twins sitting behind him on his broom, their training brooms held securely in front of him. Harry wasn’t sure how he’d gotten them on his broom, but the twins had every appearance of having been kidnapped: they were constantly darting their eyes about looking for a way to escape the broom like cadged animals. And because their mother was his daughter, Harry knew what they were going to do before they did it. 

“Oh, shi—”

Iris and Elliot both rolled right off the broom midair. Elliot landed like a cat on his feet, fell over, but was otherwise okay, but his sister didn’t execute her fall as well as he did; she smacked the ground belly-down and then rolled. It looked to be extremely painful to Harry; he inhaled with sympathetic pain and rose at once to hurry over to her, his heart pounding with concern, but she bounced back at once. She jumped to her feet and took off running over to Ginny. She stopped in front of her, out of breath, disheveled. She doubled over and set her hands above her knees as she gasped from overexertion and probably pain. 

“Yes?” She asked. 

Ginny looked at her like she’d grown another head. “Don’t ‘yes?’ me! Didn’t you hear me telling you not to go in the woods?”

Iris blinked. “Oooh, you were _for real_.”

For a second, Harry thought Ginny’s head might explode. He quickly stood and stepped between her and Iris. He kneeled down and reached up to gently pluck some leaves from Iris’s long, tangled copper hair. 

“Are you okay?” He asked her. 

She was kneading over her ribs, and her mouth was set in a grimace, but she nodded. “Yeah, can I go back and play now?” 

“No. You look at me right now,” Ginny ordered sternly. She poked once at Harry’s hip. He stepped to the side and out of her way so she could see their granddaughter. She reached out and grabbed Iris’s chin to make sure she was looking her full in the face. “When I speak it’s always ‘for real’. Understood?” 

Iris nodded obediently. It looked odd on her— obedience. Harry wasn’t sure he trusted it. Ginny clearly felt the same way, because she didn’t let Iris go just yet. 

“Everything I say is serious. If I tell you to stop, that’s serious, and you do it. If I tell you to stop doing something, that’s serious, and you do it. Commands from grown-ups are never optional. Got that?” 

Iris’s nose scrunched up a bit as if she’d smelled something bad. She seemed to be thinking hard about something. Harry halfway expected her to argue, but after a long moment, she smiled tightly. 

“Yes Ginny. Can I go play now?” 

Feeling like their five-year-old granddaughter was somehow outsmarting them, Harry was hesitant to allow her. Something felt suspicious in the easy way she’d agreed with them. He exchanged an identical look with Ginny, but they didn’t exactly have a reason to keep her standing there with them, so they nodded. 

“Yeah, go on,” Ginny sighed. “Listen better this time!”

“Okay, yes, I will do that,” Iris nodded. Harry really couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. He often felt that way with things her dad said, too, so it wasn’t a mystery to him where she got that particular ability from. 

“Say what you will about Lily as a child,” Harry hissed to Ginny, his eyes on Iris as she bounced back over to her cousins, “but at least she was a bit more straight-forward. Iris is just as stubborn as she was, but I feel like Iris is a bit more…sneaky about it.”

“Mmhmm,” Ginny agreed. “Lulu snuck around plenty, but she was always such a loud little person…Iris is a bit more calculating.”

“Whereas that one…” Harry trailed off, his eyes on Elliot as Elliot loudly shrieked instructions to his fellow ‘beater’ where the other team could clearly hear their strategies. “Not so much.”

“Probably a blessing, that,” Ginny muttered. She leaned her head back against the chair and looked up at the sky with her eyes shut.  “Hopefully this’ll tire them out and some of them will fall asleep right after dinner.”

Harry sighed. “Dinner. Feeding this lot will be tricky.”

“I say cook what you want and if they’re hungry, they’ll eat it,” grumbled Ginny. 

He supposed she had a point. He knew he needed to probably get started on dinner, but he was enjoying sitting there watching his grandchildren laugh and play. And a few minutes later, when he and Ginny joined them in the sky to help with some chasing and seeking techniques (Lou strapped in a carrier to Harry’s chest and Alice perched in front of Ginny on her broom), he lost track of time completely. The next thing he knew, the sky was darkening, and Delilah was loudly whining about being hungry. It set the rest of the kids off. 

“What _are_ we having for dinner?” 

“Is it spaghetti?” 

“No, I don’t like spaghetti! I want gyros!”

“What if we had _fish and chips_?!” 

“What if we had _cake_?” 

“What if we had _pavlova?!”_

Harry glanced at his watch. “What if we had sandwiches and called it a night?” 

Everybody groaned, except Lyra, who politely said: “Sandwiches are lovely and versatile.”

“I don’t _want_ sandwiches,” Elliot pouted. 

The rest of the grandkids didn’t look much more enthused by the idea. Harry thought hard about what was in the kitchen that he could make quickly. 

“Okay, what about…soup!” He had a whole batch of potato soup frozen. It would be easy to thaw it. He had some bread baked already, too. 

This was less agreeable to some grandkids and more agreeable to others. Harry realized there was no way he was going to find something they all liked. 

“We’ll do soup and sandwiches and if you don’t like it, you can have the Ginny Special,” Ginny said firmly. 

Elliot perked up. “What’s the Ginny Special?! Is it cake?” 

“No. It’s bed without dinner.”

“Never heard of it,” Elliot shrugged. He squinted up at Ginny. His glasses lenses were remarkably dirty. “Are you _sure_ it’s not cake? Cake has funny names sometimes. Like ‘fat rascals' or 'better than sex’. Those are cakes.”

Rory and Finnigan gasped, scandalized. “Elliot!!” 

Elliot turned to look up at them. “What? You don’t like cake?” 

“You can’t say that word!” 

Elliot looked up at Harry, baffled. “What word? How come you can’t say words in England? At home we can say all the words we want to say. Do you have policemen for talking? You can’t say coffee here, or cake— I guess—and you can’t say twat, either.”

Harry had to work very hard not to laugh. “Cake and coffee are just fine. Avoid the t-word, though, yeah.”

“There’s not a policeman for talking,” Lyra piped up matter-of-factly. “It’s just not good manners to use dirty words. It makes people think you’ve got no home training, and then they think your parents aren’t good parents, and they might think you aren’t a good kid. That’s why you use good manners.”

Iris looked at Lyra in shock. “You get _trained_ like dragons here?! Like animals do?” She turned to Elliot. “This is how come Mummy and Daddy say we aren’t living here.”

“No, that’s not what she meant,” Benji piped up. “Training’s like teaching, right, Lyra? Right?” 

“Right. Daddy and Papa teach me things all the time, and Auntie Nora, and Uncle Jamie. Don’t Lulu and Cade teach you stuff?” 

The twins nodded eagerly. “All sorts of stuff!! We know how to put up tents all by ourselves—”

“I know how to scoop up _huge_ piles of dragon dung—”

“I can make skin healing potion for Mummy’s burns!” 

Harry leaned into Ginny, alarmed. “That’s…illegal, right? Isn’t that an illegal potion to make without the proper Healing certifications?” 

Ginny kneaded over her eyes and didn’t respond. The twins kept excitedly trilling off the things they knew how to do. 

“I can tie my shoes the muggle way!” 

“I can send photos to Aster on the muggle pocket phone!”

“I can climb up onto the roof of Mummy’s office all by myself!”

“Daddy taught me how to write letters to people!” 

“We know how to read!”

“Bini taught me how to put fire into my mouth!”

“I can do that, too!!” Elliot boasted. “And I can ride my bike without holding onto the handle bars!”

“I can start big fires!” 

“I can fix scratches and bites on dragons with special cream!” 

“I can shoot arrows!”

“Uh, okay,” Harry interjected. They were getting too excited; he was worried one of the other grandkids would challenge them on one of their abilities and the twins would feel obligated to demonstrate it. He didn’t doubt they were being honest and that their parents had taught them how to do those things, but he didn’t want to see any of them firsthand. “How about you lot go read quietly while I get dinner together?” 

Rory and Lyra perked up. “Yay! Okay!!” 

The rest, however, didn’t look quite as excited. Harry just hoped they could contain themselves long enough for Ginny to settle Lou down in his cot and for him to slap some sandwiches together. 

* * *

 

They couldn’t. Big surprise. After Delilah got hit in the head by a decorative glass bowl— Elliot and Henry had been wrestling and accidentally kicked it across the room— Harry resigned himself to guard duty. He and Ginny took turns patrolling the sitting room while the other minded dinner. The kids couldn’t seem to be left alone for even five minutes without somebody getting horribly injured, and Harry wasn’t sure his heart could take anymore accidents tonight. 

The kids were so hungry by the time food was ready that nobody complained once. Everybody scarfed their food down, except for Iris, who picked at hers and seemed more subdued than usual. Harry, who was sitting beside her, leaned in and brushed her messy hair over her shoulders. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked. 

Iris was picking the crusts from her sandwich, but it just looked like she was doing it to have something to do. She wasn’t making a move to eat any of her now crustless sandwich. 

“My belly hurts,” she said. 

Harry studied the profile of her face. She did look more down than usual, but Harry thought he recognized the slight furrow to her brows. 

“Do you miss your parents?” 

Iris looked at him quickly. Her eyes were glassy. She nodded once. 

“They don’t leave you very often, do they?” Harry guessed. They didn’t have any other family in New Zealand, so Harry figured Lily and Caden rarely went anywhere without the twins. 

Iris shook her head. 

“They’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. You’re safe here with Ginny and me,” he comforted her. 

He hadn’t expected her to be so sensitive. James’s kids didn’t like being away from their parents overnight, but they did okay with short dinner trips like these. Lyra— probably the most coddled of all— usually did well, too. He hadn’t expected Iris to be the grandchild about to cry after only two hours parted from her parents. 

They let the kids eat a tiny bit of ice cream and listen to the radio before bed, and while they were safely doing that, Harry sat beside Ginny on the couch and shared his revelation. 

“Iris is looking pretty pitiful,” he commented. “She doesn’t usually act like this when we watch her, does she?”

Ginny was already looking at her. She was lying on her back on the carpet like most of her cousins were, but her head was leaning against Elliot’s arm, and her ice cream was sitting untouched beside her. 

“I was just thinking that. Do you think she’s ill?”

“I dunno. She said her stomach hurt at dinner, but then I asked her if she missed her parents, and she nodded.”

“Well, she is pretty attached to Caden…she did cry for him the last time we watched them, though they were a good bit younger then.”

Harry had forgotten about that. Still, he didn’t feel like this was normal Iris behavior. It worried him, and when he looked at his wife, he could tell it worried her, too. She stood from the sofa a second later and walked over to where the twins were lying. She squatted beside them. 

“Iris, are you feeling okay?” She asked. “You didn’t eat your ice cream.”

“That’s ‘cause her belly hurts,” Elliot explained. “She said I can have it.”

Ginny moved to sit on her bottom beside them. “Your belly? Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?” 

Iris shook her head. “No, it hurts bad from falling.”

Harry’s heart squeezed nervously in his chest. Ginny looked momentarily alarmed. “When you fell? What do you mean?” 

“When she jumped from the broom,” Harry reminded Ginny. He stood and walked over to where they were. He didn’t kneel though; his knees were hurting enough as it was. “She landed face-down.”

Ginny frowned. “You did, didn’t you?” She remembered. “You didn’t say it hurt. Did it hurt when you fell?”

Iris nodded.   

Harry was as baffled as Ginny. “Why didn’t you say something? You jumped up like it was nothing!” 

She shrugged. “I wanted to play so much. It hurts the most now.”

“Can we see your belly?” Ginny asked, worried. 

Iris pulled her shirt up to expose her stomach. Harry was alarmed at once. 

“Oh Merlin!” he exclaimed. She had what looked like one giant bruise blooming over her ribs. No wonder she kept saying her stomach hurt. 

“Iris!” Ginny cried. “This is horrible! You should have told us! We could have put bruise cream on it earlier! You poor thing; I bet this hurts terribly!”

“No, I’m tough,” she told them, though she certainly didn’t _look_ tough. “Tough like Mummy.”

“Your mum is a _masochist_ ; you shouldn’t be trying to handle pain like she does. And I can say that because I’m her Mum.” Ginny pulled Iris’s shirt back down, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. “Next time you’re hurt, you tell me at once.”

Iris frowned. “You’ve got so many rules, Ginny. I don’t think I can remember so many. But I’ll try.”

Ginny patted her hair. “If you think this is bad, you should go stay with Auntie Hermione.”

“Yeah no. I don’t think so.”

“Hugo has so many rules,” Elliot added seriously. “Dahlia has to do weird stuff, Ginny! Like…dust! And put her shoes in one special place? And she has to fold her blankets on her bed in a special way! It’s so weird…they just love rules.”

Ginny went to get some bruise cream. While she was gone, Harry listened to his grandchildren argue over whose house had more rules. Iris sat up to argue passionately with Benji over who was more strict, Gran or Draco, and as she did, Harry spotted something sticking out of her pocket. He hadn’t noticed it before because her shirt had been covering it, but when Ginny had pulled it back down, it gotten caught on the top of the object. He was almost certain it was a letter. Curious, and well aware of the twins’ hoarding tendencies, he reached out at once and pulled it free. Iris reacted as if he’d slapped her. 

“No!!” She howled. She lunged at him, but he quickly held it up and out of reach. “No!!! Harry!!”

Harry examined the envelope. _Mrs L. P. Rowle, 18 Hillgate St, Kensington, London W8 7SR._ It was addressed to Lily, but sent to Albus and Scorpius’s home, meaning it was sent recently. And the return address… _The Department of Mysteries, The Ministry of Magic, Whitehall, London…_

Harry looked down at his granddaughter who was still jumping up to try and snatch the letter from Harry’s hands. Harry was baffled. 

“Where did you get this?” 

Iris looked close to tears. “Give it back!!” 

“No! Where did you get this, Iris? This is addressed to your mum. Has she seen it?” 

Iris didn’t answer him. She just put all her focus and might into jumping as high as she possibly could in her attempts to get the letter back. Harry turned to Elliot. 

“Elliot. Where did you two get this?” 

He tried to feign innocence. “I didn’t have it!”

Harry sighed impatiently. “As if you weren’t part of it. C’mon, Elliot. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“No, you’re sort of old,” Elliot agreed. 

Harry inhaled deeply to try and remain calm. “Where. Did. You. Ge— hey!” 

The letter was yanked right from his hand, and when he looked down at Iris, he saw her staring hard at it as it shot from his hand and flew towards her. He was able to quickly snatch it midair. She gave a cry of defeat. 

“Fine! Fine! Fine!” she exploded. She crossed her arms angrily, but she must’ve hurt her bruise because she cried out in pain a second later. Harry’s sternness softened. He ignored his bad knees and moved to sit on the floor beside her and Elliot, the letter held securely in his hand. 

“Iris. Look at me.”

She did. Her brown eyes were glassy behind tears. 

“Where’d you get this letter?” 

She pursed her lips together unhappily. 

“Well?” Harry pressed. 

Reluctantly, she said: “Rosie put it in Mummy’s bag for her the night we got here.”

Harry nodded. That made sense. What didn’t make sense was why Iris had it. 

“So you took it? Why?” 

“We didn’t want Mummy to see it,” Elliot answered at once. Iris shot an angry look at him. 

“Why not?” Harry asked, confused. “It looks to be something important.”

Iris glowered at the floor and refused to answer. Elliot couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut. 

“Because before when Mummy was helping the Department of Mysteries and Evvie, she was working all the time— _all the time_. All day she worked at the sanctuary and then all night she worked in her office with the door shut.”

“Elliot! Shut your big fat mouth!” Iris snapped. 

“No! I don’t gotta! Don’t call my mouth big or fat!”

“I will if I want! ‘Cause it is! So fuck off!” 

“Okay, stop fighting and look at me, you two.” They did. “I’m trying to understand. You saw the letter, you saw that it was from the Department of Mysteries, and you decided to steal it so your mum didn’t see it? Because she works too much when she helps them?” 

Elliot nodded while Iris stared at her feet. 

“You do realize that Mummy does important things when she works with this department, right? She and her friends created the vaccine for lime pox, the one that helped save so many dragons. That’s important.”

“Yeah,” Iris said, her voice pretty cold for a five-year-old, “but _we’re_ importanter.”

Harry sighed. He tucked the letter into his shirt pocket. “I’ll have to talk to your mum about this.” 

“No, don’t give it to her, please, Harry?” Elliot pleaded. He stuck his hands down into his pockets and withdrew two handfuls of random objects. “You can have all these things if you promise not to give it to her.”

Harry eyed the half-eaten mint and assorted other objects. “No thanks.” He spotted Ginny approaching them from the corridor. “Oh, Ginny’s back. We’ll get your bruise taken care of, Iris.”

“But Scorpius will still need to scan you to make sure you didn’t hurt anything inside,” Ginny added, coming to sit beside them. “It won’t hurt, though.” A pause. Her red brows furrowed. “What’s wrong with you two? Did you get in trouble?”

Ginny looked quizzically at Harry. He mouthed _later._

* * *

 

 _Later_ arrived precisely two hours and fifteen minutes afterwards when their kids— and their kids’ spouses— returned from dinner. Harry and Ginny had spent the time up until then trying to coax the younger grandkids into lying down for a “rest” until their parents got back. Alice and Lou, of course, had fallen asleep, and Lyra snoozed on and off, but the rest were simply refusing to go to sleep until their parents returned. Harry was fine with that…as long as they were calm in the meantime. Thankfully, they were all pretty worn out from the long day and were content to lay under a blanket fort listening to different radio stations. 

Albus and Scorpius were the first to return. Albus entered calling for Lyra, and she shot up like she’d been waiting the whole night to hear his voice. She ran to her dads beaming ear-to-ear, and they received her with similar grins. 

“I missed you _this much!_ ” she cried, stretching her arms out as far as they could go. 

“That much! Well, we missed you _this much_!” Scorpius exclaimed, stretching _his_ arms out as far as they would go. Albus kissed Lyra’s laughing face, and Harry thought to himself that he had never seen Albus as happy as he looked then, freshly reunited with his daughter. 

“How was she?” Scorpius asked Ginny and Harry. 

“Darling. She’s our little voice of reason and sanity,” smiled Ginny. Lyra hid her face into Albus’s shoulder, smiling bashfully. 

“Did she eat her dinner?” Albus asked. “Did she take her eyesight potion yet?” 

 _Damn,_ Harry thought. 

“She ate her dinner, yeah, but we forgot her potion,” Harry admitted. “It was, er, an eventful evening.”

“That’s all right!” Scorpius said cheerfully. He tapped Lyra’s nose. “We’ll just give it to her before bed.”

Harry looked quickly at his son to make sure it really _was_ all right. Lyra was the most important thing in the world to Albus and so Harry never wanted to fail when he was watching over her; he knew it would be a severe hit to his and Al’s relationship, and after the trouble they’d had in his younger years, Harry was hypersensitive to those risks. Luckily, Albus didn’t look too bothered. He just seemed happy to have his daughter back in his arms. It made Harry think about little Lulu, and for a moment, it was easy to see the resemblance in Lyra, and his own resemblance in Albus. It felt simultaneously like forever and no time at all that he’d once stood here cradling _his_ little girl. He could remember with treasured detail the softness of her hair as she leaned her head sweetly against his shoulder, the weight of her in his arms, the sound of her little giggles. How was it that that time was over already? 

“We’re back! Where are my baby bears?!” 

James’s call set off a stampede of little feet. The sound of it drew Harry from his painfully nostalgic thoughts. He turned and watched as Finnigan, Rory, Henry, Delilah, Benji, and even tiny Alice came running towards James and Nora. Ginny had gone to get Lou, and when she walked back in, Lou cooed happily at the sight of his parents. 

“Thank you _so much_ ,” Nora told Harry and Ginny. Harry felt his heart warm as she leaned in and hugged him tightly. “We needed it. We _all_ needed it. It’s been so long since we’ve gotten to see each other without kids around.”

Harry smiled. “Anytime. It wasn’t bad at all. Right, Gin?”

She waved her hand nonchalantly. “No, it was fine. We only had two busted heads and maybe one instance of internal bleeding. It was peachy, over all.”

James took his mum’s humor in stride, but Albus’s face turned red immediately. 

“Not Lyra??”

“No, not Lyra,” Harry said reassuringly. 

“It was Elliot, and Delilah, and Iris,” Rory tattled. She was holding onto James’s hand. “But it wasn’t Lilah’s fault; Henry and Elliot were wrestling on furniture and knocked a glass into her head. It cut her, but Ginny fixed it.”

“Oh, darling!” Nora cooed. She angled Delilah’s face up towards the light shining from the candelabra and inspected her forehead. “Just here?”

“Yes,” Delilah said. 

Nora kissed the spot gently and swept her into a hug. “You’re all right now, yes?”

“Yes,” she said happily, clearly pleased to be the center of her mum’s attention. 

“The twins? Are they okay?” Scorpius worried. “Where are they? Not asleep, surely?” 

“They weren’t a moment ago; they were playing with Harry’s Chess set…let me go check on them…” Ginny turned and headed back towards the sitting room to find the twins. They were certainly two kids you didn’t want to lose track of. 

“When she finds them, can you check on Iris, Scorpius?” Harry asked. “I know you’re eager to get home and get Lyra to bed, but Iris fell pretty hard on her stomach from the air, and she had this huge bruise over her ribs…we just want to make sure nothing’s wrong inside. She seems to be doing all right now that we fixed the bruise, but…” 

Scorpius looked concerned. “Of course. I’ll go check on her now.” He turned and kissed Albus’s lips gently. He set his palm on his cheek right afterwards. “Be right back.”

Harry kissed his Potter grandkids goodbye, promised to see them tomorrow for dinner, and then hugged their parents. He glanced over at Albus and Lyra after James’s family left. They were sitting and chatting at the kitchen table while Scorpius tended to Iris. 

“I guess I’ll go see if she’s okay,” Harry said. He yawned a moment later, and not even a second after that, Albus yawned, too. They shared a quick smile. 

“Long day,” Albus agreed. 

“The longest. You had fun tonight, though, right?” 

Albus nodded. “I did. Nora is right— we don’t get to do that enough. It’s rare that I get to have a conversation with my siblings without the kids hanging all over us.”

Harry smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He glanced at his watch and frowned. “Are Lily and Caden ever coming back or have they made a run for it?” 

Albus shrugged. “Search me. They were supposed to be apparating at the same time Scorpius and I did. No telling where they ended up.”

Harry felt a bit annoyed. “Well, we didn’t sign on to watch their lot indefinitely— oh, wait, hang on,” he had caught a flash of red from the corner of his eye. He turned to face the window over the kitchen sink and peered through it. He relaxed. “They’re here. They’re walking up now.”

Albus rose. “I’m going to go make sure they’re not one twin short. Want to go check on Iris, Lyra?”

“Yes! She’s my best friend,” Lyra told them. 

“Really? I thought Benji was your best friend?” Albus asked curiously. 

“He is! And Elliot…sometimes.”

“Just sometimes?” 

“Just sometimes.”

“I understand. Lulu’s my friend _sometimes_.”

Lyra giggled. She and Albus walked from the room hand-in-hand. Harry walked over and opened the kitchen door, expecting Lily and Caden to be right outside of it ready to walk in, but they weren’t. He frowned. 

“I know I saw them…” he muttered to himself. He stepped out into the cool night and squinted out at the moonlit forest. He peered hard at every shape in the distance. He was so focused that the sound of something hitting the side of the house nearly made him jump. He turned towards it. And then he sighed. 

“Oi!” he called. His voice didn’t even seem to register: his daughter and her husband continue snogging against the side of the house like a pair of shameless teenagers. “Don’t you think you’re a bit too old for that?” 

Lily turned her face to the side, breaking her and Caden’s kiss. She was slightly out of breath as she responded. 

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Dad,” she said first, and then: “Did you see the _Evening Prophet_ tonight?”

Harry’s thoughts flew to his and Ginny’s display in the Three Broomsticks. _Damn it._

Caden at least had some sense. He stepped back, freeing Lily in the process, and turned towards Harry. 

“Sorry,” he said. He walked over towards the door. Lily huffed and stamped on after him. “Did the twins set anything on fire?”

“No,” Harry said, relieved. He hadn’t realized that was a potential worry. “Elliot tried to fly across the room though and fell; he cut his head open. And Iris jumped from her broom and landed face down on the ground. Scorpius is checking on her right now.”

Caden stopped in front of Harry. He frowned. “How far did she fall? Is she okay?” 

“I think so, but we wanted to be sure. It was a pretty hard fall. She didn’t say anything about it at the time though…she acted like it didn’t even hurt at all ’til later when the bruise hurt too badly to keep on pretending.” He looked at his daughter. “She said she was being tough like you, Lu.”

Lily didn’t look too pleased to hear that. She looked up at Caden and exchanged a quick look with him that Harry had trouble deciphering. 

“I’m going to go check on her,” Caden said. He was calm, but Harry could tell he was a bit upset. He hoped he wasn’t upset with him and Ginny. Surely he knew how impossible it was to keep the twins away from danger? They were magnets for it. 

“Me too,” Lily said at once, but Harry reached out and grabbed her smaller hand in his before she could. 

“Hang on a moment,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Lily faltered. She eyed Harry warily. “Look, if this is about what the twins walked in on— it’s fine. It wasn’t even that bad. We talked to them about it and we’ve got a new rule now about always knocking on closed doors so I think that ought to fix that problem.”

Harry shook his head. “No, they didn’t say anything about walking in on you two—”

“Oh, it wasn’t Caden and I they walked in on,” Lily said, suddenly sounding a bit sly. “It was Albus and Scorpius.”

Harry frowned. “What were the twins doing opening Albus and Scorpius’s bedroom door? I hope you got onto them.”

“It wasn’t their bedroom and it was sort of a misunderstanding. The twins weren’t trying to sneak about or anything. What did you need to talk to me about? Can I check on Iris first? I made her and birthed her and so it’s important to me to make sure she’s not, like, bleeding internally.”

That seemed fair to Harry. “Yeah, you’re right. This can wait a bit. Let’s go see how she’s doing.”

He and Lily walked towards the sitting room. When they entered, Iris was curled up in Caden’s arms, looking her age for one of the first times that day. She was sniffling into his shirt and clutching him tightly. 

“Is she okay?” Lily demanded. 

Scorpius nodded. “She’s okay. The tissue around her ribs is a bit tender, but nothing is broken.” He reached out and stroked Iris’s tangled coppery hair. “That must’ve been a hard fall.”

Iris nodded against Caden’s shoulder. Lily walked over and stood beside Caden. She reached out and poked Iris’s shoulder gently. 

“Hey. You.”

Iris turned her face towards her mum and reached for her at once. Lily propped her on her hip, wiped the tears from her face with her left hand, and said: “There’s nothing cool or badass about hiding bad injuries from the people that can help you. Tough people take care of themselves. Even me. What’s all this about you not telling Harry and Ginny that you hurt yourself?”

Iris’s eyes swelled with tears. Caden stepped in. 

“Is now really the time? We can talk to her about that later.”

“No, now’s a great time. It’s all fresh and new.”

“She’s exhausted and she’s in pain—”

“And she’d be in less pain if she’d told my parents she was hurt in the first place! That fucking freaks me out, Caden. She can’t do that.” Lily moved her eyes to Iris. “Do you hear me, Iris? You can’t do that.”

“I _know_ ,” Iris said, annoyed. “It’s a new Ginny rule, okay?” 

Lily studied Iris’s eyes intently. Harry could tell she was trying to make sure she was serious. After a moment, she nodded. 

“Okay.” She leaned in and kissed her. Iris leaned into her touch. “Are you okay now?” 

Iris nodded. She yawned a second later. “I want Daddy to hold me.”

Lily scowled. “What, I’m not good enough?”

Iris yawned again. “Your arms aren’t comfy.”

Lily shook her head and passed Iris onto Caden. Elliot looped his arms around her waist a second later. “I think your arms are comfy, Mummy.”

“There you go, Lily,” Albus commented. “You’ve always got that.” 

Lily shot a rude hand gesture at him; Scorpius gasped and covered Lyra’s eyes at once.

“Time for us to get home,” Albus yawned. He stood, Lyra still attached to his hand. He walked over, shared a hug with Caden, and then— to Harry’s joy— a genuine hug with Lily, too. She hugged him back just as warmly. Harry glanced at Ginny. _Yay!,_ she mouthed. Harry grinned. 

“And correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like your bedtime, too,” Caden told the twins. 

They yawned simultaneously. “Yes,” they chorused. 

Harry bid Albus, Scorpius, and Lyra farewell, kissed the twins goodnight, helped Ginny round up all their pets for the night, and then went to the sitting room to wait for his daughter. It didn’t take long at all. 

“They must’ve been tired,” Harry said when she entered. 

She walked over and collapsed on the sofa beside him.“Exhausted! What’d you do to them?”

Harry shrugged. “Nothing. It was probably all the crying that did it.”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “All the crying? What? Did they cry a lot?” 

“Well, they both got pretty traumatic injuries, though Iris didn’t properly cry about it ’til you two got here.”

Lily nodded. “Right. And until _Caden_ got here, you mean. She’s going through this massive phase right now…I dunno how I feel about it. It’s like…she loves me, but she _loves_ Caden, and also, Caden probably hung every star in the sky singlehandedly using muggle teeth floss.”

Harry laughed. He couldn’t help it. He could tell it sort of bothered Lily, though, so he stifled it as soon as possible. 

“You went through something similar around Iris’s age. It drove Ginny _mad._ Don’t worry…Iris will grow out of it.”

Lily looked skeptical. “I dunno, Dad. I think she just likes him better.”

“There will be times she likes him better and there will be times she likes you better. It’s going to change all the time. Just like I’m sure there are times when you like me better, and times when you like your mum better.”

Lily sighed. “I guess so. I just don’t get it. Elliot doesn’t do that. Nothing’s really changed, but she’s just decided that Caden’s the one who should do everything for her. She wants ‘Daddy’ to hold her, ‘Daddy’ to read her books at night, ‘Daddy’ to take her to the shops, ‘Daddy’ to sit by her at dinner. And it’s not as if Caden works all the time and she never gets to see him…he’s probably home just as much if not a little bit more than I am.”

Harry set his hand over the envelope in his pocket. “I think that might be it right there, Lily, if there’s any sense to it.” He pulled the letter out and passed it to Lily. “Iris took that. She’s been hiding it since the first night you got here.”

Lily reached out and took the envelope. Her lips parted in shock when she saw the writing on the envelope. 

“I _knew_ I didn’t misplace this!” she exclaimed, outraged. “Caden and I looked everywhere for it! And Iris had it?!” 

“Yep. We saw it sticking out from her pocket when we lifted her shirt to check her stomach after her fall. She was really upset when I took it, too. Tearing up and jumping to try and take it back from me.”

Lily was as baffled as Harry had been when he’d first found it. “ _Why?”_ A flash of alarm crossed her features. “Do you think they’re kleptomaniacs?”

“Er…possibly. But not about this. When I asked them about it, Iris got fairly upset. She said the last time you worked with the Department of Mysteries, you were working all the time. She was afraid you’d do that again if you got the letter.”

Lily’s brow furrowed. She rubbed over her eyes. Harry wondered if her eyesight potion was wearing off; Lyra always made the same expression and rubbed her eyes the same way when her vision started blurring again. 

“I guess I _was_ really busy when I was working on that vaccine.”

Harry nodded. His voice was gentle. “She said you worked all day long and then came home and worked in your office all night long.”

Lily lowered her face into her hands for a moment. Harry felt a pang of concern. He forced himself to wait for her to say something. He could tell she was upset, and he felt bad about that. 

“So maybe she’s a bit ill with me,” Lily mumbled into her hands. “Maybe that’s why I’m a second-class citizen to ‘Daddy’ lately.”

“It’s possible. Or it’s just a phase she’s going through.”

Lily kept her face in her hands. “This parenting thing is reeeeeally fuuuuucking haaaaard,” she groaned. She looked up at Harry. “And something else: that ‘mummy guilt’ thing is not a joke. Here I am feeling like _shit_ for helping to eradicate a worldwide epidemic, all because I missed a few family dinners and goodnight kisses.”

Harry smiled sadly. He reached over and patted her knee. “If it makes you feel any better, ‘dad guilt’ isn’t a joke, either. I used to feel so guilty…Merlin, there was this one time— it probably lasted about two or three weeks when you were a little younger than Iris— when you would try to hide my work robes and briefcase every single night. And you used to _cry_ when I left— horribly. Merlin, I used to leave the house in tears feeling like the world’s largest git as if I was running off to a brothel every day instead of, you know, working to rid your world of horrible people who would harm you.”

Lily sighed heavily. “Advice?” 

Harry patted her knee again. “Drink. Cry on your spouse’s shoulder. Talk to your child about it. _Don’t_ bottle it up and let it fester because then it might manifest as severe paternal insecurity that may ultimately lead to you having a falling out with one of your children.”

“Speaking from experience,” Lily nodded. 

“A wealth of it,” Harry sighed. “Too much, sometimes.”

Lily let her head fall against his shoulder. Harry smiled softly. 

“It can be so easy sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes, taking care of them feels like the most natural thing in the world. And other times I think…” she trailed off. It didn’t matter. Harry knew what she was going to say without it being said. 

“There were plenty of times I thought that, too,” he reassured her. 

She thumbed the edge of the thick envelope. “I think Albus is better at it than me. And that’s weird…him being better at something than I am…”

Harry shook his head at once. “He’s just different. You’re different, Lily. I don’t think the twins would respond well to Albus’s style of parenting, just as I don’t think Lyra would respond well to yours.” 

“I guess that’s true,” she allowed. She looked up at him. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m trying as hard as I can with everything I have?” 

Harry’s smile felt a bit sad this time. “Yeah. Because you always do with everything you care about. You’re not lacking passion, Lu. We’re alike in that way, you and I.”

Lily laughed. “Yeah, though you might be a bit worse; I never work other people’s jobs for…” she trailed off. “Damn, that’s actually a lie. I do people’s jobs for them every day at the sanctuary.”

Harry shrugged. “If they’d do them the right way…”

“Exactly!”

He was thinking about that missing child and the Aurors’ failure to find him as they trailed off. He glanced at his daughter and wondered what she was thinking of. 

“They want me to join their ‘Cure Club’,” Lily said flatly, and it took Harry a moment to realize she was talking about the letter from the Department of Mysteries. 

“Is the ‘Cure Club’ an actual title or…?” He was skeptical. 

“No. Just what I call it in my head. It’s the group working on a human cure for lime pox. It’s not that simple, though. We can cure the disease in them all we want, but the children infected in utero will always be non-magical. We can’t turn back time.” 

Harry’s mind flew to all the tensions within the Auror department over the Free Magics. Their plot to find a way to transfer magical ability clearly hadn’t reached Lily yet. Harry wondered if it was okay to tell her— but then he remembered that she was Lily and would find out eventually anyway. 

“People are trying to find a way to do just that, though. There are groups looking for ways to transfer magical ability back to those children born without, and then other groups want to transfer magical ability to _all_ people, muggle and squib alike.”

Lily nodded knowingly. “The ‘Free Magic’ nutters. I saw one of their ‘demonstrations’ in Hogsmeade last week. Quite spirited, but I felt it lacked something. Common sense, perhaps.”

Harry didn’t respond right away because he wasn’t really sure how he felt about it. His feelings were complicated and somewhat contradictory on the matter. There was a part of him that felt it was wrong— unfair, even— to change the genetic makeup of people who wouldn’t otherwise be part of their world, but then he had to wonder…did that mean he was, deep down, prejudice in some way against muggles? Did that mean some part of him felt they were lesser or unfit to be part of his society? Did he think wizardkind was superior in some way just because of their abilities? 

It made him uncomfortable. It got even worse when he considered his own squib grandchildren. Rory and Benji…he’d be lying if he said he wouldn’t want them to get their magical abilities back if it ever became possible. Not because he cared that they were squibs— he loved them just the same, it didn’t matter to him— but because he felt Hogwarts was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and it made his heart sick to think about the other Potter kids going off to Hogwarts without them. James’s department was giving a non-magical campus a spin, but it wasn’t anything like the real Hogwarts, and the experience would surely pale in comparison. 

But if he felt his own grandchildren were ‘good enough’ to get their genetics changed, to get the gift of magic…what did it mean if he thought _everybody_ shouldn’t get that opportunity? Did he think his family was better? 

He knew himself and he knew his own heart. He didn’t wish ill on anybody. He didn’t think himself better than anybody. But it was difficult for him to reconcile the conflicted emotions and thoughts he had anytime the matter was brought up. 

He was certain he wasn’t the only one, too. He thought the Ministry’s failure at responding to the Free Magics’ threats in enough time to stop them from gaining traction was mostly in part to the Ministry’s own discomfort with the moral conundrum in general. Were people less skittish about the entire ordeal, they might not have shied away from confronting it head on. 

“It’s only going to do the opposite thing, you know,” Lily told him sagely. “This bit about giving magic to everybody is only going to fuel the blood purists and get them going again. It’ll stir them up, give them something to rally against, and here we go again…it’s my third year, take two. No thanks. Caden and I don’t fancy going undercover again. And fuck, we’re in trouble if the Death Eaters take over. To the good side, we’re Rowles, so we’re fucked! To the bad side, we’re Potters, so we’re fucked!”

“It’d be a difficult situation for you,” Harry agreed. “Luckily, it’s never going to happen.”

“There are a lot of things that have happened that we always said would never happen, though,” Lily reminded him.  She raised her index finger into the air. “Me having kids— happened.” Another finger joined the first. "Caden going more than two days without bathing— happened once when we were camping when there was that earthquake.” A third. “Zabini finding a woman who willing has sex with him on a semi-regular-ish basis— happened!” Lily shook her head. “It’s all up in the air, Dad.”

Harry watched her with amusement. For a moment, she looked just like her passionate, indignant daughter. 

“I mean, if I _have_ to, I can do the ‘Mini Death Eaters’ thing again. Caden and I can pretend to go dark…but I’d rather just live my life like a normal person.” A beat. “Normal- _ish._ ”

“That’s the dream, Lulu,” said Harry. He patted her hair. 

She sighed. She folded the envelope and stuck it into her back pocket. “Guess I’ll do my part to try and keep society from imploding in the first place. Even if it means I get disowned by my daughter.”

“She won’t disown you,” Harry said firmly. 

“You underestimate her ability to hold grudges,” Lily muttered. “She still won’t talk to Mia’s niece because she called Iris’s favorite dragon ‘hideous’ on her first visit a year ago.”

“Well, at least you’ve got another one,” Harry said lightly. “That’s why your mum and I had more than one kid, you know.”

“Right, of course. What else would you have more than one for?” 

“Exactly.”

* * *

 

“So Iris and Elliot stole Lily’s letter from the Department of Mysteries— the department wants to get her involved with the lime pox cure— so that she won’t get wrapped up in it like she got wrapped up in her dragon lime pox vaccine, and Lily feels really guilty because not only did Iris tell me this but apparently she’s been blatantly and coldly favoring Caden over Lily and so now Lily’s worried that Iris doesn’t love her anymore and that she’s a terrible mother. And also, she’s worried the Death Eaters will come back and she’ll have to go undercover again.”

Ginny blinked. She lowered the hairbrush from her hair. “Okay. That’s…a lot. You could’ve prepped me a bit before going all in.”

“There was also a bit about feeling inferior because Albus is better at parenting than she is. Her words, not mine,” Harry added. He put his toothbrush into his mouth and began vigorously brushing his teeth as Ginny processed all that. 

“Well, what did you tell her?” she asked. “Did you tell her that she went through something like that when she was younger, too?” 

Harry nodded and pointed at the toothbrush in his mouth. Ginny didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t talk; she was going to ask questions anyway. 

“I hope you told her Iris will grow out of it because she will. Did you tell her that?” 

Harry pointed more insistently at his toothbrush. Ginny resumed brushing her hair. 

“The last thing we need is for Lulu to have some sort of insecure mental breakdown…she’s got all the trappings of a runaway mum and I just don’t think I could handle the articles Rita Skeeter would write about it. Plus, you know, how traumatizing it’d be for all involved. And when I commit murder on top of it, it’s just not going to be a good day for the Potter family.”

Harry spat into the sink, rinsed his mouth, and then said: “I did a good job. She felt better come the end of our talk. At least, I think so, anyway.”

“So you did tell her Iris would grow out of it?”

“Yes. I did. And I told her about when she used to hide my work cloaks and such when she was little to try and stop me from going to work. Do you remember that?” 

Ginny laughed immediately. “Oh, yeah! That was awful! I felt so bad for her.”

“She’ll be fine. Iris will be fine. They’ll all be fine. They’re too stubborn not to be.”

She stepped into his space and leaned against the front of his body, her arms winding around his waist. “A fair point, Professor Potter.”

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Is this about your essay again?” 

She looked at him from underneath her lashes. “I just can’t believe there’s _nothing I can do…!”_

Harry grinned at her. “Well,” he said, his arms moving to wrap around her and tug her closer, “I can think of something…”

At once, he got a quick, intrusive flash of the unmarked assignments towering in a pile on his desk at work. He scowled. 

“No, I can’t do it,” he said apologetically. “There’s absolutely nothing sexy about teaching.”

“Yes there is! It’s a very common kink!”

“Only by people who’ve never taught.”

“Yes, well, I think you’re sexy in your professor robes,” she sniffed. 

“You thought I was sexy in my Auror robes,” he reminded her. He grinned cockily. “Maybe it’s just me you like. I dunno. It’s a theory I’ve been playing around with the past couple of decades.”

She gasped lightly. “Revolutionary.”

* * *

 

He didn’t sleep well at all. He was surprised to find that there were many things bothering him at the back of his mind— the kidnapping case, Lily’s odd reaction to the woman in the coffee shop, the dilemma with the Free Magics— and they chose nighttime to torment him. He tossed and turned restlessly, hovering somewhere between sleep and consciousness, his mind never slowing or shutting off. By the time the floor creaked above his bedroom, indicating their guests were awake for the day, he felt as if he’d only slept for maybe an hour. 

“Who trained that child of ours to be such an early riser?” Ginny complained into her pillow. “Wasn’t us.”

Harry yawned deeply. “I dunno, but I guess I’m getting up. I’ll go start breakfast.”

“A fry-up. Consider it.”

Harry turned over onto his side and reached out to brush Ginny’s fiery hair off her face. The intermittent grays made him smile. 

“I thought you were ‘clean eating’ after Hermione showed you that book or whatever?” 

“Eh.”

“Agreed,’ Harry said. 

He wasn’t surprised to find Caden and Elliot in the kitchen when he entered. Caden looked maybe a bit more exhausted than Harry did; they exchanged a brief, knowing look. 

“Rough night?” Harry wondered. 

Caden deferred the question to Elliot. Elliot, perched atop the worktop, kicked the lower cupboards with his heels as he answered. “I woke up loads and loads.”

Harry walked over and leaned against the counter beside where Elliot was perched. He pulled his grandson in for a hug and kissed his hair. 

“So you woke your mum and dad up loads and loads,” Harry deduced. Elliot nodded happily. “Why were you waking up so much?” 

“‘Cause I was just so excited for the morning-time when I could wake up.”

“But sleep in important,” Harry told him. He certainly felt its importance right then after a night without it. 

“It’s not _that_ important. It’s not as important as washing your hands after picking up old dragon scales, or drinking water, or muggle karate…”

Elliot kept on listening things he felt were more important than sleep while Caden and Harry stood there in a sleepy stupor. Finally, after Elliot trailed off— and the child could talk for hours about nothing— he tapped Harry’s arm. 

“Are you going to cook me food?” 

“ _Please_ ,” Caden added. 

“Please are you please going to cook me food, please?” Elliot amended. 

Caden sighed. 

“Yes, I’m going to cook right now,” Harry said. “Are Iris and Mummy still asleep?” 

“No, they’re getting all the tangles and knots from Iris’s hair. Mummy said she looks like she was fighting werewolves in her sleep.”

“Ah,” Harry said. 

“Daddy, can we go somewhere _special_ today since Iris gets time with just Mummy? That would be the fairest.”

Caden had begun making coffee and tea for everybody, but he stopped at that and gave Elliot an odd look. 

“She’s only brushing Iris’s hair. That hardly constitutes as them doing something special together. You’re welcome to go up there and join them.”

“No, my hair doesn’t take any time to comb. What if we went hiking?” 

“This isn’t the best place to hike,” Caden reminded him. He observed his son for a moment longer. “We _could_ do something, though. You and me. And maybe Harry?” 

Caden glanced over at Harry with a neutral expression, but Harry felt a bit of timidness lurking. It was odd to him; Caden was one of the most calm, confident people that Harry knew. To be fair, though, he and Caden hardly ever did things without Lily or Ginny around. 

“Sure,” Harry said at once without thinking it through. He was supposed to spend Saturday catching up on his marking, but he felt he couldn’t say no to his son-in-law. It would be nice, he thought— to do something just the three of them. Harry, his son (in law), _his_ son…he thought of Nora as a daughter and Scorpius as a son, but he’d always felt there was a bit more distance there with him and Caden. He didn’t know if it was because of how far away he and Lily lived or maybe because of how aloof Harry had been at the start, but he wanted to fix it, and now seemed like a good first step. It’d make Ginny _beyond_ happy, too, and Harry loved things that made his wife happy. 

Elliot was extremely on board with this plan. 

“Yes!! Just us boys! Ha!!” 

Harry snorted. Caden rolled his eyes fondly. 

“What should we do since we can’t hike?” Caden asked. He turned back to the kettle as he waited for Elliot to mull that over. 

“Hmm…maybe…” Elliot’s eyes roved around the kitchen before landing on the window over the table. He didn’t have his glasses on yet so Harry doubted he could see much at all, but he must’ve seen something, because his adorable face lit up a moment later. “Bird watch!! Let’s go bird watch, Daddy!”

“Oh, Elliot, we’ll hear about it for the rest of the year from Mummy…let’s do it. You in?”

Harry laughed. He didn’t really bird-watch as a hobby like Caden did, but he did like to watch the birds who visited his garden, and because of that, he’d taken a bit of a mild interest in the local birdlife. 

“Sure, if you’re up for the harassment you’ll get from my daughter for your ‘bird stalking’. I know a place we _might_ be able to find a hawfinch, but we’ll need to pack lunch and maybe even dinner…it may take a while.”

“We’re patient, right, Elliot? And a hawfinch would be worth it.”

Elliot clearly didn’t know a hawfinch from a bluebird, but he smiled and nodded. “Right!” 

“Why don’t you go upstairs and get dressed?” 

Elliot jumped off the worktop and landed deftly on his feet. “I’m gonna go tell Iris!!”

As soon as Elliot was out of the room, Caden handed Harry a mug of tea and said: “We’re going to want to pack some sort of alcohol. Trust me.”

Harry blinked. He didn’t know what surprised him more: the fact that Caden somehow knew how he liked his tea or the fact that he seemed perfectly all right with them drinking while his son was in their care. 

“Er…why?” 

“Because he’s _horrible_ at bird watching. He thinks he likes it, but he doesn’t really. He’s got less patience than his mum. He talks extremely loudly and scares all the birds away, whines nonstop about wanting birds to show up, and then scares them off again when they finally do.”

Harry took a hesitant sip from his steaming mug. “So why don’t we pick something different to do today?” 

“We could if you like,” Caden offered. “I just think it’d be good to get Elliot out of the house and give Lily and Iris some one-on-one time. I don’t mind where we go.”

Harry nodded knowingly. “Yeah, Lu’s a bit bothered by Iris’s preference for you.”

Caden looked pained for a moment. “I know. I feel guilty about it. I think some time together without Elliot and I will do them some good.”

Harry almost said _well, it couldn’t hurt,_ but it actually could if they spent the entire time miserable. He didn’t think they would, though. 

“Worth a shot,” he said instead. “I think it’s just a phase, honestly. She’ll grow out of it. I’m sure there are times you’ve felt one of them favored her, too.”

Caden laughed. “Everyday with Elliot when he was around one.”

“And he grew out of it,” Harry nodded. “Kids are fickle.”

Caden shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter to me who they like ‘best’ at any given point. They know that I love them _,_ and they trust me, and that’s what’s important.”

Harry snorted. “Sensible. Don’t bother trying to sell that to Lily.”

“Oh, I value my time more than that, don’t worry.” There was a pause. “Want me to cook the eggs while you work on that bacon?”

Harry was touched by the offer, though he kept his face blank. “Sure, that’s a good idea. I’m sure your kids will be hungry when they come downstairs.”

He and Caden drank their tea as they worked together on breakfast. They chatted easily about the dragons the Rowles had left behind— it was a great conversation starter for all in Lily’s family and Harry relied on it in somewhat awkward moments like these— and then the conversation shifted naturally to lime pox and Lily’s letter from the Department of Mysteries. Harry didn’t know if Lily had told him what Iris had said and didn’t feel like it was his place to tell him if not, so he didn’t mention it, but the way Caden spoke of the Department of Mysteries told Harry he thought it was a bit all-consuming for Lily, too. 

“Do you think she’ll agree to help?” Harry wondered. 

“Without a doubt.” 

“Oh. I wondered. I keep thinking she’ll get overworked.”

“She’s been overworked for years, but she doesn’t handle it like most people…being underworked is what does _her_ head in,” Caden observed. 

Harry remembered the last month or so of her pregnancy with the twins when she’d been on ‘bed rest’. She’d been an absolute basket case (and drove everybody mad and turned them into one of the same). He could only agree with that. 

Somewhat hesitantly, Harry asked: “What do you think about all this? The Free Magics, the push to give magical ability back to Squibs?” 

Caden considered the question with the seriousness Harry thought it deserved. He respected him more for that. It was a topic akin to reproductive rights within the muggle world in the way it got people quickly heated; it could turn strangers into screaming enemies quickly because people just felt passionately one way or another usually (and those who didn’t— those who didn’t like to talk about it because they were undecided— tended to shy away from the topic entirely). 

“I think,” he began slowly, deliberately, “that _not_ opening up our world if we had the power to do so would be, in its very nature, discriminatory.” 

Harry wasn’t exactly sure what view he’d expected Caden to have, but that clearly wasn’t it: he felt a brief flash of surprise. He took a long sip of his tea as he processed that and put his own thoughts into order. 

“And does Lily feel that way, too?” He wondered. “Does she think muggles and Squibs should be given magic?”

“No, but not because she doesn’t want to see muggles or squibs join our world. She thinks it would be sad if muggle culture disappeared entirely; she thinks they do some things much better than us and that there are probably loads of future inventions they’ll never invent if they get magical abilities.”

It was an interesting take on it, and Harry found himself agreeing. He thought of their family’s darling Lyra…if it weren’t for the medical developments in the muggle world, she wouldn’t even exist. Or the muggle mobile phones that allowed him and his family to keep in touch with all their loved ones who lived far away. There were many things that the muggles developed that had no wizarding world equivalents. 

“It’s complicated,” Harry voiced. “I’m not really sure how I feel about it yet.”

“You might be the only one. I was at the WWEU yesterday to visit Draco and some old colleagues, and there were quite a number of people there to complain or vent about this very issue. They all feel quite strongly about it either way.”

“It’s unprecedented. Imagine the chaos if our DoM workers actually figure out a way to do it…”

Caden frowned. “I know.”

They stopped talking as soon as they heard footsteps approaching the kitchen. Harry could tell it was Ginny from the sound of them. He turned and glanced at her as she walked in, and after she took in the sight of him and Caden drinking tea and cooking side-by-side, she grinned. 

“Good morning, Ginny,” Caden said. 

She stepped eagerly into the kitchen. “Morning. I heard from a tiny, unreliable source that you’re taking a ‘boy trip’ somewhere?” 

Harry nodded. “Caden and I are taking Elliot somewhere.”

Ginny’s face was positively glowing with happiness. “I think that’s wonderful.”

“I thought you probably might,” Harry teased. He flipped the bacon over. “I suppose you’ll be taking Iris and Lily somewhere?” 

Ginny snorted. “You suppose wrong. I’m going to take a hot bath, read Gwenog’s newest book, eat something incredibly sugary, and take a nap.”

Harry set the spatula down and spun around to peer at Ginny, outraged. “You can’t save that agenda for tomorrow so I can join in?”

“Nope. Absolutely can’t. I had to talk to Rita Skeeter this week. I decided on Tuesday that Saturday was going to be a reward day for managing to get through the conversation semi-hospitably.” 

“But…”

“But nothing! We’ll make different plans for Sunday.”

Harry shook his head with mock sadness. “Why do you hate our daughter and her children?” 

“I don’t hate anybody— except Rita. I just love myself.” She waved her wand and poured herself a cup of tea. “You lot have fun, though.”

Almost with eerily perfect timing, Lily and the twins walked in, Elliot stamping and whining quite obnoxiously about something. 

“Yeah…” Harry and Caden chorused dubiously. They exchanged a somewhat surprised look a second later. 

* * *

 

“Where are you taking my boys and how long are you borrowing them?”

Harry glanced up towards the doorway. Lily observed him from over the top of her second mug of coffee. The steam was fogging up her glasses lenses. 

“Oh, damn, I forgot to fill out the proper request form,” Harry sighed. “Could I fill it out now and backdate it?”

Lily stared at him without blinking. She took a long, unamused sip from her coffee. 

“I’m going to guess that’s a no,” Harry said. 

“Four hours? Five? What?”

Harry closed his wardrobe door and set the jacket he’d grabbed from it on his bed. He arched an eyebrow at Lily. 

“Do you have something planned for the evening?”

“No,” she said defensively. “I’m just wondering when they’ll be back is all. Before bedtime?”

Harry shrugged. “Dunno. Probably but not definitely. We’re going pretty far out. We’re trying to find a hawfinch.”

“That means nothing to me. _Could_ you be back by bedtime?” 

Harry shrugged again. “No idea because you two let your kids pick their bedtimes so I have no notion of what ‘bedtime’ even means anymore. Some nights it’s seven, some nights it’s midnight.”

“Well, I dunno when they’ll be tired, Dad, I’m not a fortune teller.”

“You’re supposed to tell _them_ when to—” he stopped. He decided to let that one go for now. Wasn’t worth the argument. “How about we make it back by seven.”

Lily considered that. “Okay. Sounds good.”

“Any particular reason you want your ‘boys’ returned to you by a certain time?”

“Nope,” she said innocently. “Just wanted to know when you’d be back, that’s all.”

“Hm,” Harry said, his eyes narrowing. 

Lily leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Bye, Dad! Have fun! Be safe!”

“And what will you and Iris be doing while we’re gone?” wondered Harry. 

“We’re going to get some free dessert at Hugo’s Bakery, run some errands, get some clothes from Aster’s shop, and maybe pop into the Ministry.”

“The Ministry? To see Albus?” 

“We could,” she hedged. “Is he working today? Usually he barters for his Saturdays off.”

“I dunno. If you’re not going to see Albus then why are you—”

“HARRY ARE YOU READY?!”

Elliot’s shout was as enthusiastic as enthusiastic could be. Harry and Lily glanced towards the door. 

“Yeah, I’m ready, Elliot,” Harry called back. “Are _you_ ready?” 

“Yep! I got my shoes, my trousers, my shirt, my jacket, my pocket knife, and my keys.”

Harry mouthed _pocket knife? Keys?_ at Lily. She shrugged. Harry had wanted to interrogate her further on her cagey behavior, but before he could, she opened the door, allowing Elliot to tumble in. He ran full force at Harry and hugged him. 

“LET’S GO!”

His enthusiasm remained up until the moment it was actually time to walk out the door, and then his brain seemed to fully process the fact that he was going somewhere without his twin. He paused in the doorway and turned around to look at her standing on the other side of the room. He appeared a bit puzzled. Harry watched with interest to see if he’d back out or insist that Iris come with them. When he turned and ran towards her, Harry thought he’d decide to stay, but he hugged her close (Harry heard quite a few _awwwwws_ spread through the room) and said: “Bye!” 

“No! I want to go!” Iris complained. “Mummy, I want to go, too! We can go with them!” 

“Nope. We’ve got our own shit to do today.” Lily swept Elliot up into her arms and kissed his cheek. “Stay safe. Don’t set any forest fires.”

“Okay, I can’t anyway, ‘cause Daddy took away my matches.”

Iris had a look in her eye for a moment that made Harry certain she was going to throw a strop. But she scrunched up her face, squeezed her eyes shut, and fought visibly against her emotions. That made Harry feel much more sympathetic towards her than he otherwise would have, and for a moment, he considered telling Lily to come along with Iris. Caden beat him to it. 

“Do you want to come?” he asked Lily. 

“No fucking way,” Lily said firmly. “Iris and I are having a girls’ day. Right, Iris?” 

Iris looked up at Lily. “I guess so,” she sniffed. 

Lily wrapped her arm around her and brought her close to her hip. “We’re going to get coffee in Hogsmeade and do our nails…it’s going to be so much fun.”

Harry’s brow furrowed slightly because that wasn’t what Lily had told him before when he’d asked her what she had planned for the day. She hadn’t said coffee, had she? She’d said dessert, shopping, the Ministry. 

“Yeah,” Iris said, coming around to the idea bit by bit. She leaned into Lily and looped her arms around her waist. “Can we see Lyra, too?” 

“Maybe, we’ll see,” Lily shrugged. 

Iris hugged them goodbye one more time, Harry exchanged a kiss with Ginny, and Lily and Caden punched each others’ arms. With that, they went their separate ways. 

* * *

 

“Did Lily tell you she was going to get coffee?” 

Caden glanced over at Harry. Elliot was a few steps ahead of them doing his best to imitate a bird call. He was only managing to scare the birds off.

“Yeah…why?”

Harry didn’t want to snitch on her if she had reasons for keeping things secret from Caden— tomorrow _was_ his birthday after all; maybe it was a birthday secret— so he treaded carefully, but it didn’t sit right with him. Maybe it was just because he still hadn’t forgotten the weird way Lily had acted in the coffee shop the day prior. And wasn’t that where she’d told Caden she was going— the coffee shop? But she hadn’t told Harry that. Why?

“We were just there yesterday and she had two cups this morning. Is she getting addicted to coffee?”

“It’s Lily so anything is possible,” he shrugged. “I don’t think so, though.”

“Oooh! Look! _Look_!” Elliot exclaimed. When Harry looked towards him, he saw he’d climbed his way up into a tree with very few low branches. How had he done that? He was holding onto the trunk with his left arm and pointing up with his right at a common starling. “It’s beautiful!”

“Wow,” Caden appreciated. Harry had a flock that liked to pass through the Den garden so he was positive Caden had seen them before. “Look at their coloring, Elliot— it looks like stars.”

Elliot began climbing up the tree. “I’m going to get it for Lyra!!” 

“No,” Harry and Caden said quickly. 

“But her name is stars and this bird looks like stars!” 

“I know, but her dads won’t let her have a bird.”

“Delphi has a bird and her bird is much bigger than this bird!” Elliot argued. “And we have dragons!” 

“Yes, but not all families want animals.” 

“That’s just fucked up.” 

Sensing they needed a topic change, Harry pointed a few feet in front of him and said: “Look! There’s a baby starling with its mummy.”

They were pecking at something on the ground, probably staying near to their nest. After a moment, another chick followed the first, and the three snuffled about in the leaves. Elliot scaled down the tree to get a closer look at them. For a few moments, all he did was stare in rapt wonder. And then he promptly fell into tears. The sound of it frightened the starlings; they hopped away and towards the nest. 

“I-I-I w-want m-my mummy and my I-I-Iris!” 

Harry watched on nervously, but Caden wasn’t ruffled. He walked over, hoisted Elliot up into his arms, wiped firmly at his cheeks, and said: “You’ve got your dad and your Harry. Are we going to spend our entire trip crying? Shall I sit down and join you?” 

Elliot looked at his dad in shock. “You can’t cry.”

“I can so. Here, let’s cry together—”

Caden scrunched his face up dramatically. Elliot quickly leaned in and set his little hands over his dad’s eyes. “No! No! Don’t! I don’t want you to!” 

“Oh, so we’re going to have a nice time instead?” 

“Yes!”

“Good idea. Isn’t that a better idea, Harry?” 

Harry nodded. “A much better idea. Iris will be jealous of the fun time you’re having.”

Elliot grinned wickedly. “ _Yeah_! ‘Cause she didn’t get to come!” 

Harry knew better than to point out that Iris was certainly having her own fun time without _him_ on her and Lily’s mysterious day trip to Merlin only knew where. Instead, he nodded along and met Elliot’s victorious high-five. 

“I’m gonna write a note to the special star birds, okay?” Elliot asked them. 

Harry had no idea what he meant. He glanced at Caden. Caden looked wary. “A letter? Like…on paper? With a pen— oh.” Elliot had already pulled out his pocket knife, opened it, and headed towards the tree. Caden sighed as he began stabbing the bark in an effort to etch something into the tree trunk. “Of course.”

“ _D-E-A-R S-P-E-S-H-U-L B-E-R-D-S…”_

His ‘writing’ on the tree was little more than light scratches on the bark: his pocket knife was so dull it couldn’t do much at all. 

“Shall we tell him birds can’t read?” Harry muttered. 

Caden looked at Harry and shook his head firmly. 

“You’re right. Not worth the strop.”

“Not at _all_.” 

They had lunch, saw a few more starlings and some robins, and then they gave up on finding a hawfinch. Elliot was so noisy that it was a miracle they’d seen any birds at all. But their failure at spotting one didn’t ruin Elliot’s day at all: he held onto their hands for most the hike back, jumping and swinging between them periodically, chatting nonstop about everything. Harry was glad to be there with them (even if he was missing a lovely, quiet afternoon with Ginny.) He was certain there would be times during the rest of the Rowles’ visit that he longed for the peace and quiet of his empty home, but right now, looking down at the sunlight catching Elliot’s copper hair as he laughed about something silly, he couldn’t imagine being parted from Lily and her family again. He felt that way every time she left. He was certain he’d never get used to it. She was _his_ baby, after all. And it didn’t feel like it’d been that long, really, since she’d been Elliot’s age, and giggling, and carefree, and spirited. 

“I know everybody tells new parents this,” Harry began. They were nearly done with their hike now. Caden was carrying Elliot (he’d gotten tired). “But they grow up really quickly. Extremely quickly. I can’t believe how fast. People used to tell me that when mine were young, and some days, after they’d been particularly rowdy, I’d think ‘not fast enough’. But it all went by so fast.”

He was frowning when Harry glanced over at him. 

“I believe you. Because these five years went by in no time at all.”

“I remember that well. I can remember thinking, when mine were around the twins’ ages or younger, that it wasn’t fair how quickly the days seemed to come and go when I was happy. My childhood felt never-ending.”

He sensed Caden’s glance. When he looked over at him, he was looking at him almost in surprise. 

“I think that all the time,” he admitted. “I think…why is it that now, when my life is wonderful, nothing wants to drag on and on. It did when I was younger.”

Harry smiled sadly. “It’s the same reason people find it so difficult to produce a Patronus, really. Painful experiences make more of an impact on us in some ways. Most people can readily think about their three worst experiences, but it’s a bit harder to pinpoint their three best with the same certainty. Happiness feels rushed.”

It hardly made sense to Harry what he’d said; he’d never voiced that thought aloud before. He doubted it’d make sense to his son-in-law, but when he looked over at him, he seemed to be deep in thought. 

“You know the pocket pensive you got Lily for her birthday when she was pregnant with the twins?” he finally asked. 

Harry nodded at once. He and Ginny had gotten their kids a number of them over the years. 

“They’re perfect for that,” Caden said. “Stopping the clock. Stopping the rushing.”

“I hope you and Lily are using it, then. I wish I could’ve, too.”

To be able to revisit it all now…it’d be wonderful. But time had passed— as it loved to do— and his children might’ve been grown, but he still had _their_ children to watch grow. And at times like this, with them so precious and sleepy, he couldn’t think of anything better. 

* * *

 

Lily and Iris were still gone when they arrived ten minutes after seven. 

“That’s a bit aggravating,” Harry grumbled to Ginny. “We could’ve stayed longer and kept looking.”

She reached up and straightened his glasses. “Aw, did you boys have fun?”

“Yes,” he said, unabashed. He set the picnic hamper down on the table. “Did Lily and Iris say where they were?”

“Uhh…dinner, I think, and before that…Diagon Alley?”

Harry blinked. “Diagon Alley? I thought she was going to Hogsmeade.”

Ginny shrugged. “Maybe she went to both.”

Harry sat at the table. Caden was upstairs trying to pry Elliot off him so he could lay him down to sleep, so he didn’t have to worry about him overhearing. 

“I think she’s up to something.”

“Oh, absolutely. Why do you think that?” 

Harry arched an eyebrow. “Why do _you_ think that?” 

“Because she’s always up to something. It’s such a safe bet to make. Evidence?” 

Harry told her about the weird coffee date they’d had, about Lily’s confusing itinerary for the day that changed each time she talked to somebody else, about her nagging impatience for Harry to return ‘her boys’ at a certain time (a time that she wasn’t even here!). 

“Tomorrow’s Caden’s birthday,” Ginny reminded Harry. A pause. “Speaking of, don’t you _dare_ forget to make him a birthday breakfast. I’ll banish you to the Sofa Realm.”

“I won’t!” Harry scowled. “He’s my kid now, isn’t he, and I always make the kids birthday breakfasts.”

“Good,” she said sternly. “Because I _adore_ him.”

“I know you do.” 

Ginny was terribly fond of all their children’s spouses. It was a lucky thing as Harry had feared when they were growing up that she might not. He couldn’t imagine the rows. 

“What I mean is that she’s probably being sneaky for that reason,” Ginny continued. 

“Why with me, though? It’s not _my_ birthday.”

Ginny gave him a _look._ “Maybe there are birthday plans she doesn’t want to tell her father about. Use your imagination.”

How grimaced, but he had to give her that. “Hm. Maybe.”

“You think she’s up to something else?”

“Dunno yet. I’m going to find out, though.”

“Ooh, a mystery,” said Ginny happily. “I want in. That’ll be just the distraction we need to stay sane with the twins here.”

He wrapped an arm around her and brought her close. “You’re _always_ in.”

He wasn’t sure yet what Lily might be up to, but he hoped it wasn’t anything that would cause strife in their family. With all the drama in their society currently, the last thing he wanted was some drama taking root inside the safety of their homes, too. 

 


	20. III. Mothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Rowles confront an unexpected issue. Meanwhile, the wizarding world at large grapples with something inexplicable. Iris and Lily find some common ground.

“Hm,” Iris considered. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror with intense scrutiny. She glanced up at Lily a moment later. “I dunno if it’s my color.”

Aster giggled at once, amused by Iris as she always was. Lily gently shoved Iris’s shoulder. 

“It is so! We’ve got the same complexion, you ninny!” 

Iris turned and set both hands on Lily’s hip, pushing and shoving and trying her hardest to push Lily like Lily had done her. Lily tensed her muscles and resisted so Iris would think she was exceptionally unmovable. Then, once her daughter was growling in annoyance, she eased up bit by bit and stumbled hard so it appeared Iris had gradually overpowered her. Her little daughter cackled. 

“Ha! Ha, ha! Yes! You’re getting weak, Mummy! It’s ‘cause you don’t lift weights anymore and you eat chocolate in Daddy’s lap like a lazy log!” 

Lily scowled at Iris. “I lift weights all the time! I can lift more than you can!” 

“Can not! Can not!”

“Oh yeah? Lily challenged. Before Iris could sass her again, she hoisted her daughter into the air and held her above her head. Iris started giggling at once; Lily smiled at the sound. She moved her arms down, then lifted them back up again. “Can you do this? Huh? Can you?” 

“Well— maybe—when— I’m—grown,” Iris managed between giggles. 

Lily unceremoniously dropped her to the floor. Iris twisted mid-air and landed quite gracefully. She was used to jumping from high places (brooms, roofs, Opal’s back…)

“It _is_ your color,” Lily said firmly. She turned and looked in the mirror. Her daughter moved to stand beside her and did, too, and for a moment, they were both studying themselves and then each other. They were wearing the same off-shoulder black top and they were sharing the same plum lipstick. Looking at her daughter now, Lily thought they looked remarkably like each other, the only difference being her own plethora of colorful, intertwining floral tattoos adorning her shoulders and arms and her redder hair, and that made her grin. Most the time, she thought the kids favored Caden a bit more in looks (and in general, really, but she was trying not to be resentful about that…she couldn’t really blame them.) She liked seeing herself in Iris so clearly.

“You two look _beautiful_ ,” Aster said firmly. She capped the lipstick she’d applied to both of their lips. “I told you I’m great at mother-daughter makeovers.” 

Aster and Dahlia wore the same thing nearly every single day— something that Iris had always envied, though most likely just because Aster and Dahlia could make anything look cool— so Lily had decided that they’d get a ‘mother-daughter makeover’ done at the start of their day out without the boys. Iris had been quite unimpressed with the plan at first, but as soon as they got to Aster’s shop, she’d livened up a bit. 

“See? Isn’t this better than traipsing around some musty forest looking for birds?” 

Iris scrunched up her brow. “ _Maybe,_ ” she allowed. She looked up at Lily. “But I like my daddy with me.” 

Lily glared at her. “Yeah, okay, I’ve got that.”

She wanted to say: _sometimes, I prefer Elliot to be with me, too_ , but she had watched her dad mouth off in frustration and say things he didn’t really mean too many times to make the same mistakes. She truly loved her twins equally…but she had to admit it was easier to be with the one who _didn’t_ constantly reaffirm his preference for his other parent. 

Aster— who was well up to date on the latest Rowle family drama— tugged gently on Iris’s hair. “What’s so great about _Daddy_ anyway?” she wondered. 

Iris turned and gave her a sardonic look that clearly said _are you_ really _asking me that?_ Aster shrugged. 

Lily was feeling generously downtrodden as they left Aster’s shop in Hogsmeade. So far, this wasn’t what she’d planned for their day, but she guessed there was nothing she could do about that. Either it was a phase and Iris would grow out of it or it wasn’t and Lily’d just have to accept that her daughter didn’t like her much. 

“All right,” she said glumly. She and Iris came to a stop outside of a coffee shop. She’d planned on doing one more ‘fun thing’ with her daughter, but she wasn’t feeling very fun any longer. “I’ve got something I’ve got to do now and you’ll have to come along. Try to be quiet.”

Iris must’ve noticed her tone. She looked up at Lily quizzically. “What do you have to do?” 

Lily pointed at the shop they’d stopped in front of. “I need to go in there and people-watch. Daddy and Elliot are bird-watching; well, we’re people-watching.”

Iris hadn’t taken too much interest in the activities Lily had forced earlier in the day due to her extreme insult at being separated from Caden, but at that, she perked up a bit. “People-watch? Who’re we watching for?” 

“It’s a secret. I can’t tell you.”

Iris reached out and grabbed onto her hand. “Yes! I want to know the secret! Tell me, Mummy!” 

Feeling resentful, Lily said: “Why should I? You’ve made it clear all day that you’d rather be with Daddy. Well, fine. I’ll do my own thing alone and you can just be patient and wait for me and imagine that you’re with Daddy. How’s that?” 

“Not good! ‘Cause I want to know!”

“Well, too bad.”

“Mummy! That’s _shit_!” 

“No, it’s life!” 

“I wanna _know_!” Iris exploded. She stamped her feet. Her eyes were turning red and glassy. “Tell me! I wanna know!”

Lily crossed her arms. “If you think you can out-strop me you’re wrong—”

“You always do this!! You do this _all the time!_ You don’t tell me things and you always go in your office _all the time_!”

Without much warning, Iris burst into tears. Lily took a step back in shock. Elliot was the crier; Iris rarely had such intense outbursts. Lily wasn’t really sure what to do. She looked around them awkwardly, unsure whether Iris was angry with her or not— she didn’t want to try and hug her own daughter and have her shriek at her— but her concern overrode anything else. She stepped in and reached out for Iris. She brought her into her arms and hugged her. Iris (thankfully) didn’t shove her way— if anything, she gripped her tighter than was comfortable. 

“Okay, call it mother’s intuition, but I’m getting the feeling you’re angry with me about something,” Lily said. 

“Y-Y-You work t-too much! Too much!! I hate it! I hate all the _fucking work! Fucking fuck work!”_

A group of elderly witches passing by stopped in shock at Iris’s foul mouth. Lily glared at them over Iris’s head, daring them to say a word. They moved on quickly. 

“Is this about the letter you hid from me?” Lily guessed. 

“I don’t want to miss you! It hurts! Do you understand me, Mummy?!” 

Lily wanted to laugh for a brief moment. Iris had said _do you understand me?!_ in the same exact tone Ginny always used. After the urge to laugh passed, though, she found herself feeling pained and frightened. She wasn’t sure how to handle tricky emotional situations; that was Caden’s forte. But she had to do something about this. She had hurt her child without meaning to or even noticing. She was pretty sure that made her utter dragon shite. 

“I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “I never meant to make you miss me. I know I worked a lot when we were developing the vaccine…I know I worked a lot the weeks before we came here, actually…but I’ve got a big job, Iris. You know that.”

“I know that I’m _way_ more important because I’m your whole entire daughter! Not your half-daughter! Your _whole, entire_ daughter!” Iris raged. 

Lily furrowed her brows. “Okay…yeah, you are…why are you even saying that?”

Iris turned and kicked a bench to her left, enraged. The couple sitting on it jumped. 

“Yeah, she’s strong for her age,” Lily agreed. She looked back at Iris and kneeled in front of her. She knew she was risking a punch to the face, but she’d take the risk. “Look. I don’t get this…vague shit. I need you to tell me what I did to upset you and I won’t do it again. Okay? One…two…three!” 

Iris sucked in a deep breath. And, without any preamble, it all came out. “You were supposed to let _me_ carry all Sapphire’s eggs to the hatching hutch for their checkup, but you let Elliot! You told me you would make me hot chocolate before bed but you didn’t ‘cause you were in your office using the Floo for so long I fell asleep waiting for you! You _always, always, always_ don’t read me a book ‘cause you go back to the infirmary to check on the dragons, and Lyra _always_ gets ten books _every night_! You didn’t plait my hair the night before Mia’s niece and nephew came to visit even though you _promised_ and my hair didn’t even look good! And you never let me have firewhisky, not even when I say ‘please’!”

Lily was stunned. She’d known for a long time that Iris was capable of holding grudges far past anybody else in her age group, but she’d never realized how many grudges Iris was holding against _her._ She felt a bit sick. 

“Oh.”

And, before she could do much to stop it, _her_ eyes filled with tears, too. Horribly embarrassed, Lily looked away so her daughter wouldn’t notice, but she was Caden’s child. Of course she did. 

“Are you crying?” Iris demanded. 

Lily turned her face even more to the side so she was nearly looking backwards. “No.”

“Why are you crying?” Iris sounded frustrated and confused. 

“‘Cause you’re being mean to me!” Lily said incredulously. 

“No! You’re being mean to me!” 

“I am not! I’m never mean to you! I do so much for you! I paint your nails every night! I do your hair every morning—”

Iris parted her lips to argue. Lily talked over her before she could. 

“EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE NIGHT, FINE!” 

Iris scowled. Lily scowled back. They crossed their arms and looked at each other tearfully and angrily. 

“I’m only one person, Iris! I can’t do twenty things at once! I’m sorry that I let you down—” here, her throat closed up horribly, and her vision blurred from tears— “but I’m doing the best that I can. You _know_ that we lost a dragonologist; it’s not fair for me to ask Mia to do the nighttime checks on our ill dragons every single night! Some nights, it’s got to be me! And some nights, other dragonologists are going to call me because they are in different parts of the world and their daytime is our nighttime! And those conversations are important! And yeah, Lyra gets her ten books every single night, and some nights I don’t even have time for one. Maybe you wish Albus and Scorpius were your dads. Maybe you wish I’d given the Iris-egg that made you to them so you didn’t have me for a mum. But you know what?! I try my fucking hardest every day because I love you that much, and I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Iris started crying again. Lily wanted to follow suit. “I d-d-don’t wish that! I don’t want to be their daughter! I don’t!” 

Lily wasn’t sure what to do or say. She was at a loss. She didn’t know how to make her daughter feel better because she couldn’t change the past. 

“What do you want me to do? I’m trying my hardest to get another dragonologist, but all the people who’ve applied suck. And until then, I’m going to be busy. Unless you want me to just abandon the dragons.” 

“No, I don’t want that!” 

“Then _what do you want_?” Lily asked, frustrated. “Because I don’t know what to do to make you feel better!” 

“I want you! I want _you,_ Mummy!” 

It was the first time she’d said that in weeks. All Lily had heard for over a month now was _I want Daddy, I want Daddy, I want Daddy!_ It really brought Lily to tears. She felt idiotic and embarrassed, but as soon as the first tear slid past her eyes, Iris threw her arms around her waist. Lily leaned over and lifted her up into her arms at once. Iris clung to her and cried into her shoulder. Lily felt her heart break in two, but she felt a gradual easing of the pained pressure on her heart, because she knew what to do now. 

“You want to do those things _with_ me?” she realized, her tone gentle now. Iris nodded against her shoulder. “Well, why didn’t you just say that?”

“‘Cause you always say no when I ask! You tell me I gotta sleep, or that I’ll get roasted alive, or that I can when I’m ten!”

Lily supposed she was guilty of that sometimes. As a general rule, she rarely said ‘no’, but there were times— usually at night— when she felt she had to. And, if she was being honest, after working horribly long shifts during the day and finding herself facing down another one that night, it was just so much easier to kiss Iris and Elliot goodnight and leave the house again rather than try to rein them in at work. But she realized that she was definitely damaging Iris’s trust in her by neglecting her so much, so something would have to be done. 

“You can’t do _everything_ I do. But what if you went with me when I have to go back to the sanctuary at night for Floo calls?” she suggested. “What if you sat with me in my office— as long as you _promise_ you won’t talk to Elliot and be noisy? You could take notes for me. When I work the infirmary shifts, you can come along, but you’ll have to stay in the back room; ill and injured dragons are unpredictable. You don’t want burns like me. And then, if I work with the Department of Mysteries again, you can sleep in my office if you want to on the nights I work late. Then you still get to see me.”

Iris jumped on those suggestions at once. “I can use my sleeping bag.”

“Sure. You could use your sleeping bag,” Lily agreed. She brushed through Iris’s hair gently with her fingers. “Does that make things better?”

“Yes,” Iris decided. “But I want to be a team.”

Lily thought she understood what she was saying. And, with a bit of fear— but also a bit of excitement— she took a leap of faith. “All right then, teammate. Let’s talk about why we’re human-watching today, then.”

Iris leaned back and looked at Lily. Her brown eyes were wide. Her cheeks shone beneath her tears. “You’re gonna tell me the secret?” 

“Yes. But Iris, you _have to_ promise you won’t tell _anyone_. Not even Elliot. Not even your twin.” 

Iris looked apprehensive. “I don’t know how to not tell him stuff.”

“Well, you’ve got to learn,” she said sternly. “Because this is a huge secret. It’s a secret from Daddy.”

Iris blinked, shocked. “From Daddy? But you tell him everything. You even see him naked and grown-ups don’t see other grown-ups naked because those are private parts.”

Lily nodded solemnly. “This is way more secret than private parts. I’d strip naked right here before I’d tell anybody this secret.”

Iris’s eyes were wide. “What _is_ it?” 

Lily looked both ways, and once she affirmed that nobody was paying them much mind anymore now that they weren’t yelling and making as big of a scene, she leaned in to whisper in Iris’s ear. 

“I saw a lady here and I think she’s your dad’s mum.”

Iris didn’t understand. She looked up at Lily, baffled. “A ghost?” 

“No. Alive.”

“But…”

“I know! I don’t know, Iris, but I looked at her, and I saw him. And I know your daddy’s face.”

“‘Cause you see him naked,” Iris nodded sagely. 

“…Sure. See, I can’t tell Daddy in case I’m wrong. I don’t want to upset him. But I haven’t seen her since I saw her the other day. Right after I did, I went to see Delphi—”

Iris gasped. “You didn’t take me! No fair!” 

“Sh! Do you want to hear or not?” 

Iris shut her mouth at once. Lily continued. 

“I went to see her and I looked through the few photos she has of the Rowles, but I couldn’t find any of your dad’s parents. So then I tried to go look at the _Prophet_ archives, but Rita was in the office, and I had to divert my path quickly or else she’d ask me a million questions. Then I thought I could confront the lady if only I could find her again, so here I am. Looking for her. Maybe she’s a regular; this is around the same time your Harry and I were here before. So that’s our mission, Iris. We’re looking for an old lady who looks sort of like Daddy.”

Iris was trembling with excitement. “Mummy,” she said, her eyes alight now with happiness, “we’re like spies!” 

Lily’s heart warmed. She felt overcome with affection at once. She leaned in and kissed her daughter. She understood in that moment where she had gone wrong before and what she would do from now on to fix it; Iris needed to feel important to every part of Lily’s life, not just her home life, and she didn’t know if that came from some sort of early narcissism or simply a soft, insecure heart, but Lily understood how her daughter felt now, and she’d respect that. If Iris wanted to sit in her lap and doodle for hours while Lily had long conversations with other dragonologists, she’d welcome it. She felt certain that the novelty would soon wear off. 

“Yeah! We are! But we’ve _got_ to be sneaky. Deal?” 

Iris nodded excitedly. “This is much more fun than makeovers or bird stalking!” 

Lily beamed. 

* * *

 

For the first half-hour or so, there was nothing of interest to spy. She and Iris shared a plate of scones, she ordered Iris a hot chocolate, and she drank an obscene amount of coffee. Iris was beyond engaged in their task and took it very seriously: she squinted at every person who entered and took careful note of their appearance. 

“That lady’s got dark hair. She’s not Daddy’s mum.”

“No,” Lily agreed quietly. “She’s not. I guess she’s not coming. Should we wait a bit longer? What do you think?” 

“Let’s wait. I got a feeling.”

“Okay,” Lily agreed. 

Right when she thought it was hopeless, the bell above the door chimed, and the woman she’d been waiting for walked in. She knew she wasn’t insane when Iris inhaled sharply—without Lily saying a word to alert her to the woman— and breathed “ _Daddy.”_

Lily leaned her head in and whispered to her daughter. “All right, Agent Iris. I need you to stay right here while I get closer. Can you do that?” 

Iris nodded. She lifted the menu. “Okay. Can I order something?” 

Lily had eyes on the woman as she walked over to sit in the same seat she’d sat in the other day. Lily dropped her purse on the tabletop for Iris. “Knock yourself out.”

“Yay,” Iris said happily. 

Lily left Iris at the table and moved four tables down. She sat and opened a menu, observing the woman over top of it. The woman didn’t even have to tell the waitress what she wanted: she must’ve been a regular, after all. After she had her order put in, the woman opened a book and tucked her hair behind her ear. Her brow furrowed like Caden’s did when he was reading. Lily felt a pang to her heart. 

The sound of her daughter’s voice distracted her. The waitress had gone over to Lily and Iris’s table. 

“I want this thing, the expresso,” Iris said. 

Lily glanced over at her. She was sitting tall and proud at the table alone, but Lily was reminded how tiny she was despite her confidence. Her head barely cleared the tall table. The waitress, of course, didn’t miss Iris’s tiny stature. 

“Where’s your mum?” She sounded vaguely alarmed. 

“Where’s _yours_?” Iris shot back. 

“I…” the waitress trailed off. “How old are you?!”

“Thirty-two. Do you put firewhisky in your coffee? I want five of those.” 

There was a long pause. Finally, the waitress said— in a deadpanned voice— “They do _not_ pay me enough for this. Call me back when your mum is out of the loo. I can’t believe she left you out here alone…”

Mumbling under her breath, the waitress turned to walk off. Iris was clearly insulted. 

“Hey! What about my order?! I want to talk to your manager!” 

“Oh, Merlin…” the waitress said. She made her way towards Lily, stopped, and without really looking at her, asked: “What would you like? Kids these days, I swear…parents just don’t watch their kids anymore.”

Lily narrowed her eyes at the woman. She bit back her retort. 

“Just a coffee,” she said shortly. The woman nodded and walked off without looking closely enough at her to see who she was. No wonder Caden’s possible deceased mother could come here regularly and never be noticed. Merlin. 

Lily turned and glanced over at her daughter, meeting her eye. They winked at each other. Lily nodded her head towards the woman, mouthed _shh…_ , and then stood up. She casually followed a group exiting the cafe so she was walking with the flow of traffic, took a short step to the right, and then slid into a seat at the table behind the woman’s. From this angle, Lily could make out the book she was reading, a semi-thick paperback titled _Black and Blue._ She had taken great care to color the grey from her hair— mostly— but Lily noticed her clothes appeared a bit wrinkled, like they’d been shoved somewhere before being thrown on. Lily had to force herself to be patient. 

“Here’s your coffee, Sophie,” the waitress told the woman, dropping it off in front of her. “How’s  your part-time job going?”

Lily furrowed her brow. She hadn’t realized until that exact moment that she had no idea what Caden’s mother’s given name was. It made her feel like a shit wife. 

“Fine. A bit tedious now that the holidays are over,” the woman, Sophie, answered. She gave a polite smile, but Lily saw a familiar tightness around her eyes. She didn’t mean her smile. Lily knew that without a doubt. 

Holidays…what jobs were busier during the holidays? Was she a shop girl? A shop owner? 

“I can imagine,” the waitress sympathized. 

They all became aware of a tapping sound. Lily knew without having to turn around that her cheeky daughter was tapping the table impatiently, hard enough to be heard. The waitress scowled. 

“At least you only have to deal with owls. I’ve got to deal with kids. Can you believe somebody just left that kid there?” 

Lily’s heart jolted as Sophie turned around suddenly. Lily looked to the left so they didn’t make eye contact. Her heart began pounding as Sophie looked right at Iris. There was a short pause. Did she find Iris familiar? Did she see her possible son in her? 

“Maybe you should ring child services,” Sophie wondered. 

“Yeah…maybe…” the waitress said. 

Lily resisted the urge to snort. Let them. Her brother ran the entire thing. She wasn’t worried. 

“Well, I better get back to work,” the waitress sighed. “Enjoy your coffee and your book.”

“Thanks,” Sophie said, and this time, her smile seemed a bit more genuine. 

Lily was squirming in her seat. When she looked over at Iris, Iris was equally impatient. She was debating on what to do when, to her horror and outrage, her spy partner stabbed her in the back. She choked on a sip of her coffee— the waitress had dropped it off without a word a second prior— as her daughter stood and began walking deliberately over to Sophie. 

Lily began coughing loudly. Her daughter didn’t even look her way. Lily stood, prepared to go tackle her, but Iris slid smoothly into the seat across from Sophie before she could. Well, shit. 

“Hello,” Iris greeted. 

Sophie hesitantly set her book down. “Er…hello. Are you here alone?” 

“No. My mum’s here. We’re taking a break. People need space sometimes, you know,” Iris lied. “What’s your name?”

The woman glanced around. Lily quickly hid behind her menu. “Er— Sophie. What’s yours?” 

“Iris. It’s a flower. Have you ever seen one?”

“Yes, I have. They’re quite lovely.”

“Yes, they’re the best flower. Do you have kids?” 

 _Oh, smooth, Iris, Christ,_ Lily thought. Still— she listened eagerly for Sophie’s answer. She paused for a long time— it felt awkward. 

“I don’t know,” she finally said. 

Other children might have accepted that, but Iris certainly didn’t. “What do you mean you don’t know? I think you would know.”

“You do, do you?” 

“Yes. I do. So have you ever had a baby? I think you’d remember that ‘cause it would have come out of you.”

There was another long, awkward pause. “I think you ought to go find your mum, Iris.”

“No…I like talking to you. Have you ever died before?”

Sophie bristled. Lily didn’t miss it, and neither did Iris. “No. Of course not. You ought to go back to your mum.”

“Do you have a son or a daughter?” Iris persisted. “Or both?”

“I don’t have any children,” Sophie said shortly. _Oooh,_ Lily thought gleefully, _that sounded a bit pained. The plot thickens…keep going, Iris._

“Not ever? How come?”

“That’s a personal question.”

Sophie lifted her book back up and went back to reading. Iris wasn’t deterred. 

“What’s your book about? It’s called _Black and Blue.”_

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Is it about a Quidditch team? The lady on the front has so many bruises—like a Quidditch player. My mummy gets bruises all the time only she isn’t a Quidditch player.”

Lily realized what the book was probably about and sighed. No telling how the woman would take that comment…sure enough, she lowered her book and looked at Iris as if she were seeing her for the first time. 

“Your mummy gets bruises? How does she get them?” 

 _Oh shit._ Lily knew what she’d say before she said it. “From her work and from Daddy,” Iris said innocently. 

Lily rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and sighed. _Here we go…_

“Oh,” Sophie said, her voice gentler now. “How do you know she gets bruises from Daddy?”

“‘Cause she told me when I asked her ‘cause she had some on her neck. But she said he doesn’t mean it like a mean way.”

“Oh,” Sophie repeated. She reached into her pocket. She pulled out a card and passed it to Iris. Iris took it excitedly at first, but then her face fell like she was expecting something better. 

“What’s this?” she asked somewhat rudely. 

“A card. Give it to your mummy, okay?” 

Iris sighed. “Okay. I never get letters or cards…”

Lily decided now was probably a good time to make an appearance. She stood and walked over to their table. She set a hand atop Iris’s hair. 

“Are you ready, love?” she asked, forcing her voice to be much gentler and feebler than she otherwise might have. She could feel Sophie’s eyes on her. When she glanced at her, she thought she saw a flicker of recognition. It was followed shortly by horror. The sight alarmed Lily. She lost her footing. Thankfully, Iris didn’t. She slid from the seat and took Lily’s hand. 

“Let’s go, Mummy,” she ordered. Lily followed along after her. She shot a backwards glance at the woman; their eyes met, and when they did, she felt like the woman was saying something she just couldn’t understand. She felt uneasy. 

“Look!” Iris exclaimed as soon as they were outside the cafe. She handed the card to Lily. Lily took it and peered at it. 

 _Sophie Smith_  
_Counselor  
Domestic Violence Clinic_

“There’s an address at the very bottom, look! Now we can really spy!” Iris said happily. 

Iris was so proud of herself that Lily felt compelled to smile.

“Yeah,” Lily said. She folded the card into halves and then into halves again and then stuffed it into her pocket. “Good job, Agent Iris. You’re a great partner.”

Iris beamed hugely. She threw her arms around Lily’s waist. 

“I like being with you best,” she said. 

Lily shook her head. “I think you’re fickle, Iris.” A pause. “But I’m okay with it now that I’m the favorite one.”

* * *

 

“What sort of time do you call this?” Her dad demanded. 

Lily stopped short in the doorway. “Uh…eight?”

He crossed his arms. From behind him, Lily’s mum was sipping tea idly at the kitchen table. 

“You demanded I return your boys to you at seven and you weren’t even here! We could’ve stayed out longer.” 

Lily blinked. “Oh, I forgot,” she admitted. She and Iris had walked past the clinic on the card before going home. They’d seen three women going in, but nothing else. “Sorry.” 

Iris was snoozing in her arms and she was ready to set her down. She stepped past her dad and headed towards the sitting room. He followed. 

“Where were you?” 

“Coffee. Aster’s shop. Around.” She set Iris carefully on the sofa. She conjured a blanket and tucked her up. “Where _are_ my boys?” 

“Upstairs. You were getting coffee for this many hours?” 

Lily sighed. She spun around to face her father. “Okay, I was cheating on my husband. My first lover lives in Winchester. I left Iris with Aster while I had it off with lover number one. Then I found my second lover and—”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. I’m dying of laughter.”

Lily headed towards the stairs. “Glad I could humor you, Dad.”

His hand caught hers before she could ascend the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

She frowned. She avoided his eyes. “Nothing.”

The truth was that she’d realized that Caden’s mother had probably realized who she was. And she realized what she’d probably assumed about him. And because he was nothing like that at all, it made Lily feel sick with guilt.

“You’re lying. You look upset about something.”

“I’m not,” she scoffed, defensive. She pulled her hand free. “I just miss my boys, that’s all.”

Harry arched a skeptical brow. “I never knew you were so domestic.”

“Well. I am. So jot that down. I even cook sometimes.”

She made her way up the stairs without waiting to hear anymore from him. She went into her childhood bedroom, but it was empty. She opened the door to the grandkids’ room after that. She found Caden and Elliot both snoozing in one of the bottom bunks, cuddled up together and deeply (preciously) asleep. She stood and smiled. She debated waking them so she could talk to her son, but he looked too cozy to disturb him. She retreated quietly instead and shut the door back behind her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned around: her mum was suddenly there without warning. 

“Merlin! Mum! Fuck!” 

Ginny blinked. “What?” 

“You scared me!” 

“Why are you so jumpy?” She asked, a forced casualness to her tone. 

“I’m not! Fuck!” Lily pressed a hand over her heart and inhaled deeply. “You’re sneaking up on people!” 

“I’m not,” Ginny countered calmly. “Where were you?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Lily muttered. She brushed past her mum and made her way to her bedroom. Her mum followed. She ignored her as she stripped from her clothes to prepare for bed. 

“Aster says you left her shop early this afternoon.”

“Are you _checking up on me_?” Lily demanded. She tugged a nightie over her head and spun to face her mum, outraged. “I’m an adult!”

“We’re just curious where you’ve been. What are you up to?” 

“Nothing! I’m not up to anything! I’m going to bed, okay?” 

Her mum clearly sensed her stress. Thankfully, she didn’t push it. 

“Okay. If you want to talk, you know where I am.”

“Yep.”

“Goodnight. I love you. Shall we leave Iris on the sofa?”

“Yeah. She’s fine.”

“All right. Sleep well.”

Lily brushed her teeth, washed her face so hard her skin felt tight and sore, and then crawled under the covers. She tossed and turned, her mind spinning with a hundred different thoughts. She wasn’t sure what to do about the entire situation, and the more time that passed, the worse she felt. She wasn’t sure if it was her place to do anything at all. But she couldn’t tell Caden about her suspicions…not until she figured out what the hell was going on. 

One thing was for certain, though: she hadn’t liked the way the woman had looked at her before she and Iris left. She felt as if she’d somehow deceived her into thinking something awful that just wasn’t true. And if the woman was who Lily thought she was, if she was keeping tabs on Caden, she’d undoubtedly recognize Lily. And that meant she thought her son was something different than what he really was. He wasn’t capable of the things Iris had accidentally implied. But his mum had looked at her like she were looking into a mirror…

Lily tossed and turned for hours. 

* * *

 

Lily woke with a grunt of pain as something— _someone,_ a child-shaped someone— flopped down on top of her. 

“You better fuck right off,” she mumbled into her pillow, sleep-deprived and irritated. “It’s not time to wake up yet. Go back to sleep.”

She caught a whiff of the forest-y smelling soap Caden used, indicating her pest was Elliot, who insisted on using the same type of soap as his dad. He was undeterred by her scolding. He squirmed and made himself more comfortable, moving his head down to rest it over her breasts rather than her sharp collarbones. Lily wasn’t feeling particularly patient. She poked his side blindly. 

“Oi. Are you listening to me? Go back to bed.”

“No,” Elliot mumbled tiredly. He nuzzled his face against her chest like her tits were a fluffy pillow. His sharp knees and elbows were digging into her painfully. She was _not_ going to be able to go back to sleep with her five-year-old smothering her. 

“You’ve got exactly five seconds to give me some space…one…two… _three…_ ” 

Elliot rolled off of her before she had to eject him across the bed. He didn’t exactly give her much space, though. He curled up against her side, his arms wrapping tightly around her waist, but Lily didn’t mind that. She turned over onto her side to face him and wrapped her arms around him, too. She curled closer and rested her face near the top of his head; his soft hair smelled lovely. In her sleep-soaked mind, she appreciated how much she’d missed him in the short time they’d been apart the day prior. 

“What’s your malfunction?” Lily asked sleepily. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I was alone,” Elliot complained. “Daddy left.”

Lily turned her head to the side and glanced towards the side of the bed Caden usually slept on. He’d returned sometime while she was sleeping: he was lying on his side, his back to her. 

“So?” Lily challenged. 

He groaned. “I don’t _like_ sleeping by myself! Iris came back but she won’t let me sleep in her bed with her! I had a nightmare and it was scary and now I want you, Mummy.”

She was so tired that she _almost_ gave in. But she and Caden were very strict about the kids not crawling into their bed at night; if she gave in now, even though they were on holiday, it might send the wrong message to Elliot, and the next thing they knew, their twins might be sneaking into their bed at home every single night. That just wouldn’t do at all. Lily felt confident that if they got into the habit of sneaking into their parents’ bedroom that they’d end up traumatized at what they’d inevitably walk in on. Boundaries were good. 

“Well, you can’t sleep in here. C’mon. I’ll walk you back to your bed. I’ll stay ’til you’re sleeping.”

Elliot whined predictably. “But I wanna stay in here!”

“Yep. I know. And you can’t. Let’s go, c’mon, up-up.” Lily pushed and prodded at Elliot until he climbed reluctantly from Lily’s childhood bed. Lily stood from the bed, too, and for a moment, as the cold air took over her and her warm, cuddly son leaned against her, she considered telling him to forget it. But she couldn’t give in. “Hand.” Elliot sank his hand into hers. She didn’t want him to run ahead of her and wake up anybody with his loud footsteps. “Let’s go.”

She walked Elliot back to his guest room. Iris had made her way back to her bed at some point and was lying vertically across the lower bunk, her head and feet dangling off, her blankets a puddle on the floor. Lily hoisted Elliot up, flung him unceremoniously onto his bed, and then grabbed Iris’s legs and rotated her so she was lying properly in bed. She tossed her blanket back over her. She climbed up into Elliot’s bed with a yawn right after that. He clung to her waist immediately. 

“I don’t like the nighttime. It’s stupid. Fucking stupid.”

Lily rested her cheek against the top of her son’s head. “You know the best way to make it fuck off?” 

“How?” 

“By going to sleep and ignoring the bastard ’til he’s gone.”

“ _Yeah!_ ” Elliot agreed quietly. “I’m gonna do that! Yeah!” 

“You show him, El!” Lily encouraged. She stroked his hair softly as he snuggled up to her and screwed his eyes shut. Within seconds, his breathing had deepened, and his grip on her slackened. Lily now had to figure out the best way to extract herself from his bed without waking him. She scooted slowly to the edge of the top bunk, rolled carefully off of it, and landed deftly on her feet. She paused near the bed for a moment to make sure the twins didn’t stir. When she was certain they were still asleep, she stood up and hurried back to her own bed. She jumped onto it victoriously; the mattress bounced Caden up a bit, causing him to startle from his own dreams. 

“Fucking hell! Iris, I _told you to stop—_ oh. Of course.” He threw an arm over his eyes and sighed. Lily scooted over and draped herself over him, delighting in his presence in their wonderfully twin-free bed. Another narrow escape. 

“Could you maybe, you know, climb into bed like a regular person?” Caden requested. 

“Hmm…let me think about that…probably not,” Lily said. She rested her chin against his shoulder and set her hand on his stomach. She stroked her fingers over the line of hair dipping down into his pajama bottoms. She sighed happily. She had missed him, too. “Goodnight.”

“Where did you go? Are the twins okay?” 

“Elliot climbed into our bed.”

Caden sat up slightly and peered around. “He’s not still here?” 

“No! I marched him back to his own bed. He’s fine; he’s just clingy is all.” 

Caden lowered his head back down. His voice was slightly amused when he spoke next. “And you’re not clingy at _all_ ,” he said dryly. Her spot draped over him, her hands all over his body, was not overlooked. 

She scoffed. “No. I’m not. Fuck you, honestly, I just like your body warmth. I figure I’m entitled to share it since we said those vows and everything.”

“Ah. Right. The vow about body warmth.” 

She threw a leg between his and hugged him closer. “What’s mine is yours, you motherfucker, stop complaining.”

“I actually wasn’t complaining,” he corrected her. His arm wrapped around her and gripped her closer. “Cuddle away.”

She was quite happy to do so. She fell asleep against him, slept wonderfully, and then woke to the sound of Iris and Elliot singing obnoxiously outside the closed bedroom door. She looked up at Caden; he was already awake and appeared torn between amusement and annoyance. 

“At the time, having them _seemed_ like the right choice, but—”

He cut her words off with a brief kiss. “Oh, shut up. You know you find them hilariously adorable.”

She had to relent as they began dramatically harmonizing some muggle song that played on the radio back home. She laughed aloud, her rough night and weird evening momentarily forgotten; as soon as she did, the door opened, and the twins tumbled in. Their mismatched pajamas coordinated well with their wild hair. Iris’s was a bed of tangles and knots, Elliot’s was sticking straight up in the back, and both were barefoot. Lily received them with tight hugs. 

“Morning,” she said, and then she hissed: “It’s Daddy’s birthday.”

Their gasps were immediate. Loud battlecries followed. Lily was grinning proudly as the twins jumped on top of Caden and smothered him alive with hugs and kisses. Later— as soon as she talked the twins into going outside and leaving them alone— she’d birthday-fuck him, but for right now, she thought this was the best birthday wakeup anybody could get. And going by her husband’s soft smile as he hugged the twins back, he thought so, too. 

“Mummy c’mon! Help us get him!” Elliot urged. “Get on top of him! Get him!”

“Don’t worry, Elliot, I’m going to get on top of him later…and now! Gotcha!” She landed halfway on the twins and halfway on her husband. All three yelled profanity at her and then quickly began laughing. She grinned.

“DON’T KILL THE BIRTHDAY BOY!” Ginny yelled. It sounded as if she were passing by the bedroom on her way downstairs. 

“Yeah, you heard her,” Caden said. He prodded at the twins. “Why don’t you two go get dressed for the day?” 

“Or,” Lily countered, lowering her voice as if she were telling them some sort of delicious secret, “why don’t you two go outside and climb the trees?! All by yourself?!”

The twins clambered off the bed at once. “Yes!! We never get time alone here! You only let us run off alone at home! Can we really play outside by ourselves?!” 

Lily nodded firmly. “Yep. Go on! Get lost!” 

“We won’t ‘cause we’ve got a great sense of direction!”

With that, the twins ran off. Lily made herself at home on top of Caden in their absence. 

“Are we bad parents?” he wondered. 

“Nah,” she said. “They’re fine.” She leaned down and captured his lips. Their kiss was deep and lingering. "Happy birthday.”

“I think it’s going to be quite happy,” he agreed. 

“You think correctly,” Lily affirmed, her heart swollen with love and arousal, her hands already claiming skin. 

* * *

 

Harry made Caden a nice birthday breakfast— much to Lily’s relief; she’d worried he’d exclude Caden from that particular family tradition—and her family and her parents ate and laughed their way through the morning. Lily was so focused on Caden that she hardly thought about Sophie. He wanted to take the kids to lunch in Diagon Alley with Hugo, Aster, and Dahlia later that afternoon, and in the rush of trying to get the kids out of the house, Lily tugged on her same jeans from yesterday without even thinking about it. It wasn’t until she and her husband shared a kiss outside the pub and his hands slid down to her arse that she remembered the card Sophie had given Iris, still folded over four times and shoved in her back pocket. She couldn’t do a thing about it as Caden pulled it free and unfolded it. 

“What’s this?” he asked, and then he paused as he read it. Lily looked up at him as he leaned back to look down at her, an eyebrow raised. 

She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve reported you for making me make dinner last month.”

He sensed her evasion. He struggled to catch her eye. “Seriously, where’d you get this?” 

Lily struggled to remain nonchalant. “I dunno, this lady gave it to Iris at the coffee shop—”

“Why was a lady giving Iris a domestic violence counseling card?” He looked around her towards the outside table where their twins were still sitting with Hugo and his family. 

“Iris _might have_ chatted her up and said that her dad gives me bruises. She’s thinking about love bites…she’s a bit confused.”

Caden frowned. “She’s telling people I’m beating you?” 

“No, that’s not what she said at all. She said you give me bruises, but not in a mean way.”

He scowled. “Oh, and that’s supposed to make me feel better?” 

“Yeah,” Lily shrugged. She reached out and pulled the card from him. “Who cares what some random lady in a coffee shop thinks, anyway?” 

He was being stubborn. It annoyed her. “But why did you hold onto it?” 

“I dunno! I just stuffed it in my pocket!” She could tell he knew something was up. She had to do something. She sighed. “Iris and I…we were upset and we had an argument and I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

He arched an eyebrow. “An argument? About what?”

“What a disappointing, shit mother I am,” she muttered. She looked down, her eyes searing again for a quick moment. 

“ _What_?” 

“You should’ve heard her list all the ways I’ve let her down. It was brutal. She’s been keeping count,” Lily muttered. 

“Keeping count of…?” 

“All the times I said something but wasn’t able to deliver on it. All the times I missed bedtime due to nighttime Floo calls or infirmary checks. Basically every time I’ve been a shit mother.”

“But you’re not a shit mother.”

“Yeah, well, she certainly made me feel that I was.” 

He pulled her closer and nudged her chin up so she was looking into his blue eyes. She swallowed roughly. His gaze was so intent that she forgot for a moment that they were standing on a public walkway. 

“She’s five. She’s _Iris._ Five-year-olds aren’t very understanding, and Iris isn’t very forgiving. You know she loves you.”

Lily nodded. “I know. I just…I wish I were good at this like you are.”

She felt more vulnerable than she’d felt in a while. She’d started the conversation to cover her own tracks, but she’d opened up more than she’d wanted to about the ordeal. 

“You are. I’m not any better at it. I have no idea what I’m doing, either,” he admitted. 

“You put on a good show, then.”

“If I do, that’s all it is: a show. I feel like a horrible dad all the time.”

That made her feel slightly better. She peeked up at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She _knew_ he wasn’t a horrible parent, so if he thought that sometimes, maybe that meant it wasn’t true when one felt that way. 

She desperately wanted the card back so she could revisit the counseling center in search of Sophie again, but she knew it’d make him suspicious if she did. She watched on as he chucked it in a nearby bin. Damn. He took her hand afterwards. 

“Ice cream?” he suggested. 

“It’s your day! You decide what we do,” she reminded him. “If you want ice cream, we’ll get ice cream. I’ll even buy since it’s your birthday!”

“We share money.”

“Hm, fair point. You can just buy, then.”

* * *

 

“Where are they?!” 

Lily looked up from her letter at her mum’s panicked voice. 

“What? Who?” Lily asked. 

Her mum stared at her incredulously. “Your _children,_ Lily!”

Lily went back to her letter. “Somewhere outside, I dunno.”

She was quite content on the sofa, lying between Caden’s legs, his arms warm and heavy around her. The letter she was reading from a French dragonologist was enthralling; she was detailing a dragon she’d found who’d been raised by a wolf. It was the perfect way to end her day. She thought Caden probably agreed, too. Her mum, though, didn’t seem as content and relaxed as Lily and the birthday boy did. 

“They’re not anywhere near the house! Do you realize how far out the woods surrounding the house go?!”

“Not nearly as far out as the sanctuary and they roam that property alone all the time,” Lily reminded her mum. She yawned. Caden tightened his arms around her in response. “It’s fine, Mum, I promise. Relax. They’ll come back at dark. They always do.”

“But— but!” 

“But nothing! They’ll be back in a half-hour, mark my words,” Lily said. 

Her mum left — probably to go search the land surrounding the Den; she clearly didn’t trust Lily—and Lily went back to her letter. She enjoyed the deep, relaxed rhythm of Caden’s breathing as his chest rose and fell beneath her. She had no desire to move an inch, and thankfully, he didn’t, either. 

“This is interesting,” he said. He brushed her hair back as he spoke. “This says all the ancient pureblood families used to carry a genetic blood disorder. They thought it had something to do with the magical gene, but it disappeared a century ago.”

“Hm,” Lily commented. “Probably all the inbreeding.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“You know they did it. Of course they did it. There are only…what? Twenty-seven pureblood families? Twenty…eight? Eventually everybody circles back ‘round and fucks their cousin.”

“You do realize you’re from a family on that list, too. You’re part Weasley.”

Lily gasped. She craned her neck up and glanced back at Caden. “Oh _fuck…_ d’you think we’re…?!”

“No way. There were no Rowles fucking Weasleys. I can promise you that.”

Lily realized with a sudden thrill of inspiration that this conversation was perfect for her own agenda. She worked to keep her voice as light and playful as it’d been before. 

“What was your mother’s name before she married? Are we _sure_ she wasn’t somehow part-Weasley?”

“She was a Burke before she married.”

Lily twisted around to look at him. “Seriously? Like _Borgin and Burkes_? Why the fuck didn’t we inherit some sort of fortune?”

“I don’t think that shop is as successful as you think it is.”

Lily turned around to lay back against him again. She kept her letter in her lap, though, too intrigued by the conversation. 

“How come you never told me that before?” she wondered. 

“Because I never knew her. Not much to talk about.”

“Right.” A pause. “What was her name? I don’t even know that. I know she was a Burke now, but what was her given name?” 

“Technically Arden, but the few times my grandparents mentioned her, they called her by her second name, Sophia.”

“Arden Sophia Burke. Merlin, I bet she was a _bitch_ when she was at Hogwarts. She sounds like someone who’d cut your hair in class or trip you down a staircase because she doesn’t like your shoes,” Lily commented. 

She’d mostly just said it to mask the way her face had fallen at his words. There was no way it was a coincidence that the woman in the coffee shop was _Sophie_ and his mum had been known as _Sophia._ It was undoubtedly her. But _how?_

“And they…” Lily drew her finger across her throat. “Like…confirmed?”

Caden stared at her. “Do you listen to a word I say ever?”

“Well I know what you’ve told me! But I’m just confirming! Because I never saw a body or a grave so…!”

He was baffled. “Why would I lie about that?”

“I didn’t say you lied! I just…maybe we should…” God, she had to get rid of his suspicion, and she knew how she could, but she dreaded it. “Maybe we should, y’know, visit their graves one day.”

“No,” he said at once, and then he went right back to his book as if the conversation were over. 

“Er…okay. Any particular reason?”

“Yes. They abandoned me, I never knew them, and they’re not there at their graves, they’re dead.”

“Ah. Yeah, that’s fair.”

She had no genuine interest whatsoever in visiting the graves, but it somewhat surprised her to find that her peaceful, forgiving husband still harbored resentment towards his dead (“dead”) parents. Maybe that’s where Iris got it from. 

The sudden sound of their children’s voices drew their attention to the corridor. 

“But we’re fine! Ginny! We’re okay!” 

“I’m glad you are. And you’ll be even safer inside. It’s nearly dark—”

“Nearly! _Nearly_ dark! Not dark yet!” Elliot argued. 

The twins came running into the sitting room, branches and leaves in their hair and accusation on their faces. 

“Mummy!” Elliot exploded. 

“Daddy!” Iris added. 

“Ginny won’t let us play outside!” they chorused. 

“Mum! I said they were fine!”

“I know they’re fine now. Because they’re back,” her mum said. 

“They were fine before!”

“It’s getting dark!” 

“It’s not dark yet!” Lily countered. “They’re my kids, Mum, and I said they could stay out _until_ dark! Not right before dark!” 

Lily had spent all day being very careful with her words around Iris. She made sure she didn’t tell her anything she couldn’t stand by. And she had told her she could play until dark, so now she had to stand by that.

“They were all the way near the muggle neighbor’s house! Do you know how far that is?! They never would’ve made it back in time!”

“Yes they would have!” Lily turned to face the twins. “Go back out and play. Once it’s dark, come back inside, okay?” 

The twins beamed. “Okay!!” 

Without another second’s pause, they took off running towards the door again, leaving Lily at the mercy of her mother. She wasn’t sorry, though. If anything, she was annoyed. 

“They’ll be okay,” Caden told Ginny, his voice much kinder than Lily’s would’ve been had she spoken before him. “If it makes you uncomfortable, though, I can go sit outside and keep an eye on them.”

Lily whipped her head around and glared at Caden. They were having a nice time! Why did he have to leave just to make her mum feel better? Her mum should just trust her like Lily trusted her kids. 

Ginny crossed her arms. “I think somebody ought to! Those two can severely injure themselves in a room! No telling the damage they could do to themselves unsupervised in a forest!”

Lily wanted to point out that the twins were every bit as independent as they were reckless, but she didn’t know if her mum would understand. Yes, they got into trouble, but they were actually much less likely to be reckless when they were out on their own; they saved those sorts of injuries for when they were around adults. Or, at least, any injuries they’d gotten in the wild they’d found a way to hide before they got home so Lily and Caden were never aware of them. All Lily knew was that most their bad injuries happened when they were cooped up inside cozy, “safe” places. They did better free. 

To Lily’s chagrin and annoyance, Caden pushed at her back until she moved off of him so he could stand. 

“I’ll go watch. Coming, Lily?” 

Lily snatched her letter up off the sofa. “Fine,” she sighed. 

She and Caden went outside, sat at the patio table, and looked off at the trees. 

“This is ridiculous. We can’t even see them from here,” Lily grumbled. She drew her cardigan closed against the chill. She missed her comfy spot on the sofa. “I swear my mum gets more and more worried as the years go by. She was much more relaxed when I was younger.”

“At least she cares about them.”

“Well, of course she does, she’s their…” Lily stopped. She realized her mistake at once. She twisted her expression. “Sorry. She’s a _good_ grandmother, I should say.”

Not all grandmothers cared, after all. He knew that well. And as Lily looked at him and thought about that, she felt anger spark and spread in her heart. The woman, the Sophie woman…she had truly abandoned Caden. If she had been alive all along, and if she’d hidden in the shadows and let him get raised up by abusive hags, she was no better than dirt in Lily’s eyes. Lily looked at her husband and she decided right then and there that she would be the one to enact some sort of justice. She had to: she was the only one who knew. And s _he_ was Caden’s family. And family members protected each other. 

* * *

 

The next day, she gave herself permission to continue with her secret mission. It wasn’t Caden’s birthday anymore so she felt less guilty about sneaking around. She woke before him, dressed quickly and quietly in the dark, and then tip-toed barefoot from her bedroom with her shoes in her hands. She shut the door silently and crept towards the stairs. She nearly made it, too. 

“Is it the morning?! _Finally!_ ”

Lily stopped in place. She squeezed her eyes shut in annoyance, sighed heavily, and then turned around to face her son who was standing expectantly in the guest room doorway. 

“Elliot, what the fuck. It’s four in the morning.”

“I’m not tired anymore ‘cause I slept a little bit. I’m hungry. I want pizza.”

“That’s going to be a no.” Lily set her shoes down and walked over to him. “C’mon, I’ll lie with you until you fall asleep.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulder to usher him into the room. “Be quiet, though, we don’t want to wake…”

She trailed off as they stepped in. She and Iris made eye contact. Lily threw her hands up in the air. 

“Honestly, are you two nocturnal?!” 

“No!” Elliot said defensively. His brow furrowed a moment later. “…I don’t think. Is that a bad thing?”

Iris was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bunkbed chopping some sort of root with Elliot’s dull pocket knife. The tiny pot she’d clearly knicked from downstairs indicated that she was trying to make some sort of potion. Lily rubbed her face wearily. 

“What are you doing, Iris?”

“Making something,” she answered innocently. 

“And what are you making?”

“An x-ray vision potion.” She held up the root. “I got this carrot root from Harry’s garden because carrots make your eyes strong.”

“Yeah. If you dug up his plants, I’m not protecting you. You know better.”

“I didn’t! He gave it to me! I asked and everything!” 

“Hm,” Lily said skeptically. “Fine.”

Iris set the root to the side and studied Lily’s clothes. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” Lily lied at once. “Well— I am going somewhere, but ‘nowhere’.”

Elliot and Iris exchanged a look. 

“We want to come to nowhere, too,” Elliot decided. 

“Nope. Sorry. Not going to happen. But I guess you two can stay awake as long as you promise not to wake Daddy, not to set fire to anything, and not to drink any weird potions without letting me drink them first to test them.”

“No, no, _no,_ ” Iris said immediately. She stood up and glowered at Lily. “You promised me, Mummy! You promised! We’re supposed to be a team!” 

Lily darted her eyes over to Elliot meaningfully. “We _can’t_.”

Elliot noticed at once. “Hey!! That’s not nice! That’s mean! Daddy and I didn’t make any boy secrets that we don’t tell you!”

“We can tell him! Please, Mummy! Please!” Iris pleaded. She hurried over and took Lily’s hand in hers, turning the softest, most pleading eyes on Lily that Lily had ever seen. “We’re spy partners, please, Mummy, please…”

Lily groaned. “Iris…I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back. How’s that?” 

“Not good! You said you would do more stuff with me! You promised!” 

She had promised that. And she was working very hard on rebuilding Iris’s trust in her. How badly would it damage it if she walked off now without her? She wasn’t sure. She knew she had reasons to justify doing just that, but she also realized that she’d be wasting an opportunity to earn some major points in Iris’s book. 

She sighed. “Okay. Fine. You can come. But! You _have_ to follow my lead this time. No running up to our target to talk without asking me first. Deal?” 

Iris nodded immediately. That showed Lily how much she wanted this; she knew ordinarily Iris would’ve been cheeky and told Lily that she’d done a better job getting information from Sophie than Lily had. 

“Deal, deal, double-deal.”

Elliot— who had no idea what they were really talking about— just seemed glad to get to come along with them. “Triple-double-deal,” he agreed eagerly. He wrapped his arms around Lily’s waist and hugged her. “I love doing stuff with you, Mummy.”

Damn her soft sodding heart for melting. 

* * *

 

Lily tiptoed back into her bedroom long enough to leave a note telling Caden where they’d gone (Aster’s was the lie), and then she and her twins made their way quietly downstairs. Lily filled one of her bags up with fruit for the twins to eat whenever they got hungry, made them brush their teeth in the downstairs bathroom— they didn’t even argue once!—and then brushed hers as well. She and the twins were making their way towards the kitchen door when Lily heard somebody clear their throat suddenly. 

“AH!” Iris exclaimed, startled. 

Elliot, however, surprised all of them by turning around and charging towards the sound blindly. Lily hardly had time to blink. Luckily, the presence in the kitchen was just Lily’s dad, and he caught Elliot in a hug before Elliot could kick him. 

“You’re more ‘fight’ than ‘flight’,” Harry appreciated. Elliot was breathing heavily from the sudden spike in adrenaline. “Your heart is beating away. You okay?” 

“I—thought—you—were—a—robber,” Elliot gasped. 

“No. Just your granddad, that’s all.” Harry patted Elliot’s back reassuringly as Elliot gradually calmed. He looked over his head at Lily as he did. “So where you headed this early, Lily?” 

“A run,” she answered. “The twins and I need some exercise.”

“We’re getting fat kind of,” Elliot said solemnly. He pinched his own cheek. There wasn’t much there to pinch. Harry observed him with an emotionless expression. 

“We’re not, but we need fresh air,” Iris said. It was a much better lie. Lily set her hands atop Iris’s shoulders and nodded at her dad. 

“Yep, we’ve been cooped up too long. We’re not used to it. A brisk morning run will do us all some good.”

“Caden’s not feeling well?” Her dad asked. 

Lily realized too late that her lies were inconsistent. She’d told Caden she was going to Aster’s. Fuck. 

“I didn’t want to wake him…he just looked so…”

“Handsome!” 

“Thirsty!” 

Lily shot Elliot a quick, annoyed look. “No. _Peaceful.”_

 _“Right._ ” Her dad clearly knew she was lying. Shit. 

“Don’t tell him we went running, though, Dad, he’d be upset. He’s more than welcome to meet us at Aster’s afterwards, though.”

Her dad arched an eyebrow. “If he’d want to go that much, why not just wake him?”

“Because he was peaceful, Harry!” Iris cried. She threw her hands up into the air and looked at Lily. “This fucking guy!”

Harry raised his eyebrows again, but less in a skeptical way and more in a ‘naughty-step’ kind of way. 

“What she means is…well, it’s actually exactly like she means it. She’s a brat. Sorry. We’ll work on it.” Lily stepped forward, leaned in, and kissed her dad’s cheek. “Bye, Dad! Love you!”

“Bye, Harry! We love you!” Elliot echoed. Iris blew a kiss Harry’s way. He did not catch it. 

Lily grabbed onto her twins’ arms as soon as they were outside and apparated to Diagon Alley. It was safest to appear there and not in the middle of a questionable street in Muggle London, but they had a bit of a walk to get to the counseling clinic from there. Their appearance didn’t even go unnoticed in Diagon Alley, though. A drunk peered blearily at them from a bench. 

“Did you just apparate with them kids?” He slurred. His tone was judgmental. It was sort of an agreed-upon societal rule that kids as young as the twins shouldn’t side-along apparate, but Lily did it with hers anyway because she felt she was more than adequately skilled to handle doing it properly. She’d never splinched her children or left them behind. 

“Did you just drink those two bottles of Rat Piss?” Lily challenged, nodding at the liquor bottles at his side. Rat Piss was such a cheap and vile liquor that drinking it was a popular dare when she was at Hogwarts. 

Lily spun around to face Elliot as soon as the drunk man had turned to mind his own business. 

“You! ‘Thirsty’? How the hell did that lie make sense with the context, Elliot?” Lily demanded. 

“Yeah, you didn’t handle that too well,” Iris told her twin. 

“Yes! ‘Cause if he’s thirsty he needs to stay home and drink lots of water so he can’t go running!” Elliot defended. 

“Eh. The execution was lacking. We’ll work on it,” Lily said. She sighed and turned on the spot, surveying their surroundings. “We’ve got to walk a bit. You two better not whine after guilting me into taking you.”

“We won’t,” Iris swore. “Let’s go!”

“I’ve got water and fruit if you get tired. But let’s try to walk it all the way through.”

“Okay,” the twins chorused. 

They walked. And walked. And got lost. And turned around. And walked some more. Lily’s sense of direction wasn’t too great, and it didn’t help that she didn’t have the physical address on her anymore. Having only been there once— and it being dusk at the time— she was having a hard time recognizing landmarks on the route there. 

Her son took matters into his own hand. Lily sighed as he turned and marched right over to a stranger. 

“ _This_ fucking guy,” she muttered, gesturing at Elliot. 

Iris nodded emphatically. 

“Excuse me, do you know how I can find a counselor for my mum?” Elliot asked. 

He gestured back at her. Lily twisted her expression into something slightly pitiful (not that she wanted to.) The woman looked alarmed. 

“Is everything okay?” she asked Lily. 

Lily had no choice but to engage her. She walked over and explained what she was looking for. The woman’s eyes filled with gentle pity. Lily _hated it._

 _“_ Yes, dear, you’re very close,” she told her. Lily listened as she told her exactly how to get there. As soon as the women turned and walked off, Lily lightly smacked Elliot’s shoulder. 

“What have we said about talking to strangers, damn it?!” 

He swiped her hip back. “I was helping us!” 

“Don’t do it again! I mean it! I’m serious, I’m for real, I’m sincere! Got it?”

Elliot sighed. “Okay, fine, I got it.”

“Mummy, did you know Ginny is for real every time she tells us stuff?” Iris asked. “She never teases I guess. But I don’t think that’s true. She told me I always have to do everything grown-ups tell me.”

Lily was alarmed. She glanced down at her daughter as they walked. “What? No. No, you lot listen to me: you do not have to blindly listen to everything just because an adult says it. That’s just asking for you to get kidnapped. You’re more than welcome to say ‘no, fuck off’.”

“To Ginny??” 

“No…don’t say that to Ginny,” Lily corrected. She grimaced at the mere thought. “I mean a stranger who’s an adult. You don’t listen to them. You should probably listen to your grandparents, though…” Lily slowed. She stopped outside of the vaguely familiar building. It looked different in the morning light. “We’re here. I wonder what time they open.”

“Probably early ‘cause people have so many problems to cry about.”

“Astute, Elliot.” Lily steered them over to a bench in front of a well-manicured flowerbed. The three of them sat to wait. “At least we know she’ll have to be here before everybody else since she runs it.”

“Right,” Elliot nodded. There was a pause. “Who is ‘she’?” He looked around them curiously. “And what are we doing here?”

* * *

 

Elliot and Iris were playing a new game of ‘spot the secret relative’ that was quite annoying to Lily. They’d found out about secret great-grandparents, a secret half-sister, and a potential secret grandmother all on this trip; Lily was certain they’d start to see potential family members everywhere, and she’d thought right. After promising them over and over again that there were _really_ no other family members they didn’t know about, they turned their focus to eating the fruit Lily had brought. That’s precisely what they were doing when Lily spotted Sophie coming up the road, a shoulder bag bursting with papers slung over her shoulder. Lily stood at once. 

“You two stay here and eat,” she ordered. “If somebody tries to kidnap you, bite them hard.”

“In their private parts!!”

“NO!” Lily wheeled around and kneeled in front of Elliot, shaking her head frantically. “No. That’s _kick_ in the private parts. Bite, like, their hands or arms or something. Merlin fuck…I literally can’t take you two anywhere…you know what, forget the biting— here.” She pulled her wand from her back pocket and handed it to Elliot. He and Iris immediately began fighting over it. “I’m sure you can make _something_ happen out of that. You lot are always doing accidental magic these days.”

She heaved a sigh, straightened, and marched determinedly in Sophie’s direction. She had thought all morning about what she might say. She had seesawed between asking her innocent questions until she spilled the beans and jumping right into it as if she already knew the truth. But when she stopped in front of the woman and looked into her eyes— the same eyes Lily had looked into just last night as she kissed her husband goodnight on his birthday, one of the many he’d spent without parents—it all slipped away. For a second, all she did was stare, her blood pulsing in her cheeks. She could feel her heart beating away against her ribs. Her ears were on fire. 

“Are you okay?” Sophie asked, her golden brows furrowing in that concerned, contemplative expression that Lily knew so well…

And then Lily smacked her across the face. She hadn’t had the conscious thought to do it, but she seemed to watch herself as it happened, and later, she felt the hot sting of it on her palm. The woman staggered back, her hand rising to cradle her cheek, and Lily realized her own hands were trembling at her side. 

“Walk away! Walk away! Mummy, _walk away!”_ Iris coached from the sidelines. Lily could hear Elliot’s feet slapping the pavement as he hurried over to back her up. She didn’t even know what to say. Sophie didn’t either. They were regarding each other with utter shock. 

“What was that for?” Sophie finally demanded, her hand still pressed to her pink cheek. 

Lily stamped her foot. “For abandoning my husband and leaving him with those _awful pieces of dragon shite_ who neglected and abused him his entire childhood! Yesterday was his birthday! His fucking birthday! Fuck you! He’d never tell you that, so I’ll say it on his behalf: fuck you!”

A strange array of emotion flashed over the older woman’s face. Lily couldn’t hope to understand it. After another tense moment, Sophie’s eyes drifted from Lily to Iris. 

“I thought that was you. I’ve seen you with him in the paper. I’m sorry.”

Lily’s face reddened even more. She could actually feel her pulse throbbing in her face now. “You’re apologizing to _me_? _Me_?!” 

“Yes,” Sophie said gravely. “I heard what your daughter said. Had I know my child would end up like his father…” she trailed off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Lily thought her head might genuinely explode. Her son pet her hip gently and began murmuring nice things as if he were talking to an enraged dragon. She pulled her wand from his hands and considered bat-bogeying Sophie on top of it all, but her cheek was still pretty red. 

“Mummy?” Iris asked, coming over to join them, concerned. “You don’t look okay.”

“I dunno what the fuck _your_ husband was like, but _mine_ is nothing like that! Nothing! What my daughter told you wasn’t anything like it sounded! The only bruises he gives me are the ones gladly acquired while we’re fucking each other! Where the hell were you?! They buried you— or what was meant to be you— and you threw your son to the wolves! Who does that?!”

Sophie slowly lowered her hand from her cheek. “Would you like to come sit down so I can explain myself?” 

“No! Nothing you have to say could excuse it! Nothing! I never would’ve done that! Never! And I’m not even a good mum! But I’m not _that_ shit!” 

Still— she didn’t storm off. Sophie noticed. 

“Maybe you won’t forgive me, but I’m sure you want to know how and why.”

She was right about that. Lily’s curiosity and pride wrestled. Finally, after a long, painful moment, Lily nodded once. 

“But my kids are coming, too,” she said gruffly. 

“Of course,” Sophie said, and then she smiled at the twins, and Lily stepped in front of them to shield them. 

“Stop that,” she snapped. “They’re not yours to smile at. You lost that right.”

This time Lily recognized the emotion that played out on the older woman’s face. Good. She was glad to see it. She deserved to feel pained. 

* * *

 

“Tea?”

“No,” Lily bit, right as the twins said: “Ooh yes!” 

“ _No_ ,” Lily corrected them fiercely. 

They sighed. 

Lily had them on either side of her, her arms protectively around each of their shoulders, and she was watching Sophie like a hawk. 

“Well?” she asked rudely. 

Sophie was looking at her with something akin to wonder. “You must love him a lot to be this angry. Or you’re not a very nice woman. Which one?”

“Both. Explain yourself, then.”

Her eyes flickered to the twins. “I don’t want to upset the little ones so I’ll have to skip over parts—”

“You couldn’t upset them if you tried. Be honest.”

“Fine, okay,” she said. “How much do you know already?”

“I know fuck all! Because you abandoned Caden and left him alone and all he knows is what those horrid hags told him! They said you two killed yourselves because you couldn’t stand to see Death Eaters lose power. That’s all I really know. Caden doesn’t remember anything about you, except for one memory, and the one time he thought of it, he started crying, and he doesn’t cry a lot, so fuck you for that, too.”

“What did you do to my daddy?” Elliot demanded, automatically outraged. 

“Shh,” Lily said impatiently. 

“I left. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t take him with me.”

Lily’s eye twitched. “Unfortunate? Oh, it’s _unfortunate_ that you had to abandon your child?” 

“Let me finish, please,” she said, and for the first time, her voice was icy. Lily caught herself relenting. 

“I was forced to marry Thorfinn Rowle as soon as I left Hogwarts. I had only just turned eighteen. He was violent, and hateful, and angry. I was terrified of him. He could have tried to make me feel better about the situation, but to him, I should’ve just shut up and been happy to have found a pureblood husband. I could have run away— I was well within my legal rights to— but our society…the pureblood society…to refuse and to run away would have meant banishment. And to a young eighteen year old, being excommunicated from the only world she’d ever known was unthinkable. So I married him and he was worse than he’d been before. He would fly into these angry, possessive rages…he’d hit me and he wouldn’t stop…he killed two house elves who tried to intervene on my behalf. You think, you know, that you’ll just leave if you ever find yourself treated that way, but I was too afraid of him to do that. I was too afraid to do anything. And then, after quite a number of years—so long I had thought before that it wasn’t possible for me and I was glad for that—I got pregnant. I had no choice, really, in any of it. And I had my son—”

“Caden,” Lily interjected coldly, and here her eyes burned. “His name is Caden.”

“Yes. I had him and things got even worse. He was…I had this tiny, precious thing, and every night when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Thorfinn destroying him. You have to understand…when he got like that…” she shook her head. She had tears swimming in her blue eyes. “I wanted to leave. I wanted to take him…Caden. I was going to. I had a plan and everything. And then…and then…”

She looked off. Lily felt as if she wasn’t really there anymore. 

“I was reading to him…this picture book, but I remember it was terribly sad…and Thorfinn burst in, and he…he grabbed me and he beat me and I just…I didn’t want him to hurt my son, you know, so I just stayed still…and then he— Caden. He started crying and shrieking for me. He was scared…I can’t imagine how scared. Sometimes I still hear his voice and I see his little face and—”

Lily felt sick. She tightened her arms around her children. Her twins were dead silent for probably the first time in their entire lives. They were watching Sophie with wide, haunted eyes. 

“And when he yelled like that…it made Thorfinn even angrier, and he let go of me, and he picked him up and he shook him so hard I thought he’d break his neck—”

“Stop,” Lily heard herself say thickly. “I don’t think the twins need to hear that.”

In reality, _she_ didn’t need to hear it. 

“My entire life, I thought that I was a passive person, but that changed things. It really changed things.” 

Lily understood. She sat up straighter. “You killed him.”

Beside her, in a stunned whisper: “She’s a murderer!” 

“Yes. I used a Killing Curse with his wand…he never abused me with magic, only his fists, so it was easy to get my hands on. They always say if the average person does the Killing Curse that it won’t do much of anything, but it only took me that one time. And after that…our families…we know dark curses that have been passed down for generations. I suppose when the Aurors got there, they saw the mess and didn’t care enough to look too closely into it. And, of course, at the time our lot weren’t given the time of day…if you were a Rowle, as far as they were concerned, the world was better off without you. I wrote a suicide note saying we just couldn’t bear to live in the world anymore now that we no longer had any power. It was a narrative everybody was eager to swallow at that time. And I left.”

“Yeah, you left. You left your child. Why not take him with you?”

“So he could live on the run? I had no idea what the rest of my life would be like. I knew I’d have to go far away until everything had died down and time changed my appearance enough that I wouldn’t be looked twice at. What sort of life was that for him?”

“Better than the one he had.”

“Yeah? Because it looks to me like he’s got a pretty great one. I see the articles and photos in the _Prophet_ and _Witch Weekly._ ”

“He does _now_! He didn’t before! And he had to work his arse off to get the life he has now! You have no idea the shit he went through. How could you leave him with his grandparents when you knew the way the Rowles were?”

She looked ashamed for the first time. “I thought I could come back for him. But as he got older…I started fearing that he would end up just like his father. And it was easier to stay away. You must understand…I wasn’t okay mentally or emotionally. It’s taken me a very long time to heal.”

“I _don’t_ understand. And I don’t think that’s an excuse,” Lily said stubbornly. 

“Maybe not, but it’s the truth, and that’s all I can give you.” Sophie’s look turned grave. “Are you going to tell him?” 

The question took Lily off guard. “I don’t know. I probably have to.” She nodded her head towards her children. They couldn’t hope to keep a secret this big for very long, especially not Elliot. 

“Well, I can’t stop you.”

“Yeah, you’re fucking right. You can’t.” The situation laid out in front of her suddenly gained new weight as Lily imagined what Caden’s reaction might be. She felt tremendously pressured under the weight of it; she didn’t want to be the one who told him, but she couldn’t keep it a secret, either. That wouldn’t be right. “Are you staying in England for good?”

“I think so. I like what I have going here.” She gestured around at the office. 

“And did you have any plans of actually, you know, contacting him at any point while you’re here?” Lily demanded. 

“No.”

Lily looked off to the side, momentarily stunned by the shittiness of it all. She suddenly felt like a much better mother than she usually gave herself credit for. 

“Well, he probably won’t want to see you, either,” she retorted. She didn’t actually know if that was true; Caden spoke of his parents so rarely that Lily didn’t have much insight into his true feelings about them. He sounded bitter sometimes, but he was a forgiving man. Maybe he’d want to give her another chance. Lily didn’t think Sophie deserved it. 

“I know. That’s why I never planned on it. If I couldn’t be a mum when it mattered most, I have no business strolling in trying to be one now.”

“I actually couldn’t agree more.” 

She stood and the twins followed suit. She kept them close to her sides. They didn’t complain or try to start another conversation with Sophie. Lily was shocked by how well-behaved they’d been the entire conversation; she decided she’d get them something nice after this as a reward. 

“Before you go—” Sophie said quickly. Lily stopped. She expected some sort of question about Caden (maybe how he was, or how his birthday had gone, or something like that) but she asked: “How did you know who I was when you saw me?” 

Lily shook her head. She felt terribly tired suddenly. “You look so much like him. It was easy.”

She didn’t say goodbye or say one way or another whether or not they’d see each other again. She left as abruptly as she’d arrived. Lily didn’t stop or say a word until they had walked a good ways from the building, and then she stopped, squatted so she was at eye-level with the twins and yanked her children into a tight hug. Her eyes were burning as she hid her face against their shoulders. 

“I’m so proud of you,” she told them. That’s all she needed to say: they inflated with pride and hugged her back even tighter. 

“I don’t like her. I wanted to swear at her so bad,” Iris admitted, her voice muffled into Lily’s top. 

“Me too,” Lily agreed. “But that time you did the right thing by staying quiet.”

“I feel sad for her,” Elliot told them, but that was all he offered up. 

Lily pulled back from their hug and peered seriously at the twins. “There’s one more important thing you have to do. You have to keep this a secret. I’m going to tell Daddy, I _promise_ , but you need to let me do it a special way so we don’t make him upset. Okay?” 

The twins nodded. 

“I don’t wanna tell him, anyway, ‘cause I think he might cry,” Elliot said worriedly. He looked off in the direction they’d just left. “I would cry and cry and cry ‘cause I’d miss you so much, Mummy.”

Lily seized the twins again in a hug, overwhelmed at once by the huge swell of sorrow those words set off. “I would never do that to you two. Ever. _Ever._ You’d never have to miss me because I’d never leave you.”

“I know,” Iris said bravely, but Lily thought she sounded a tiny bit upset, too. 

“C’mon,” she told them. She stood up and took their hands. “Let’s go back to Diagon Alley and have lunch. And then, we can go to the broom store.”

The twins looked at her like they hardly dared to hope. “For…?!” Elliot asked, his voice trembling with excitement. 

Lily nodded once, resolute. “For new brooms.”

“Yay!!!” the twins cheered. The prospect of new brooms dominated the conversation the entire walk back. It wasn’t until they sat to eat that the twins thought again about the odd situation they’d just witnessed. 

“Mummy,” Iris began. She set her drink down on the table and looked at Lily. “How come Sophie’s husband did that to her? Those bad things.”

Lily wasn’t sure how to answer that. “He was mean.”

“I thought grown-ups weren’t allowed to hit when they’re angry,” Elliot began, “but he hit Sophie all the time. And you hit Sophie, too.”

Lily didn’t feel guilty about it. “I did. And adults can hit each other. Who told you that?” 

“You did! You said we had to learn better ways to argue ‘cause once we were grown-ups we can’t fix everything by hitting and kicking each other,” Iris reminded her. “You said we’d go to prison. Are you going to go to prison?” 

“No. I’m not going to go to prison for slapping her. If anybody’s going to prison, it’ll be Sophie for actual murder, not me for slapping a child-abandoning murderer lying about her identity.” 

“Why is she _not_ in prison if she killed a person?” Iris wondered. 

“Because she was never caught.”

“We can tell Albus,” Elliot suggested. “He can get her.”

“I dunno,” Lily said uneasily. She recognized the moral conundrum she’d placed her children in, and she wanted to do the right thing, but at the same time, she sort of understood that part of Sophie’s story. If somebody put their hands on her like that, or— Merlin forbid— on her children or dragons like that, Lily was certain she’d lose control of herself, too. And that was a scary thought to have. “Let’s hold off on deciding about that until we ask Daddy what he thinks.”

The twins thought that was fair. 

“If I were a mum and Daddy was my baby, I wouldn’t leave him,” Iris told them solemnly. 

Lily reached out and patted Iris’s head. “I know you wouldn’t.”

* * *

 

Caden was sitting outside sifting through paperwork when they apparated back to the Den. The twins took off running towards him at once. He set his papers to the side and tugged them up onto his lap, his arms wrapping them up in a secure hug. Lily smiled. 

“How was your run?” He asked the twins. He looked up at Lily. “Oh, welcome back, traitor.”

Lily scowled. “I told my dad not to say anything about a run!”

“Well, he did. Why didn’t you wake me? I would’ve wanted to go,” he told her needlessly. Of course he would have. 

“You looked so peaceful, Daddy,” Iris said sweetly, her hand set lovingly against his cheek. “We didn’t want to disturb your slumber.”

Caden snorted. “‘Disturb my slumber’? I can tell you’ve been spending a lot of time with Lyra.”

“All the time! She’s my friend and also sort of my sister.”

“She’s all right,” Elliot shrugged. 

“Can I see her tonight?” Iris wondered. 

“You’re in luck. She’s here already. She’s having tea with your grandparents and Draco.”

Iris grinned wickedly. “Draco…excellent! C’mon, Elliot!” 

Lily snickered. Caden held onto the twins so they couldn’t run off. “Don’t you two go harass Draco. I mean it.”

“Ugh!!!” 

“But it’s so fun, Daddy! It’s so fun!” 

“That’s not nice. Draco is my friend. Don’t annoy him so much.”

Elliot threw his hands up. “We just can’t help it! We’re annoying! Kill us, then!” 

“Oh, Merlin. Go on,” Caden said. He opened his arms. The twins scampered off to presumably harass Draco. They liked to try and debate him about anything and everything. Lily found it hilarious to watch. 

“I’m going to go watch the show,” she told Caden. 

He reached out and caught her hand before she could. She squeezed his fingers. “What?” 

He was looking at her oddly. She couldn’t understand the look. Sad, maybe? 

“Sit,” he requested. 

He looked serious. It freaked her out. She backed up and sat beside him, her eyes studying every single inch of his expression for clues on what was wrong. 

“What?” she repeated. “What’s wrong?” 

His eyes studied hers, too. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I think you’re hiding something from me.”

Lily grimaced. She didn’t deny or confirm it. She waited. 

“You never care about waking me up. You’ll wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me about your dreams. So where did you really go this morning?” 

He wasn’t angry. If anything, he was worried. It made Lily feel guilty. 

“Not cheating on you, if that’s what you’ve assumed. I never take the twins when I meet my lover. That’s just irresponsible.”

“Bold to assume you could find another lover to put up with you,” he quipped back. Lily shot a rude hand gesture at him. She could tell he felt a bit better after that. 

“So where’d you go?” he asked again. 

She took a deep breath. She shifted to face him more. “Don’t freak out.”

He groaned and threw his head back. “I hate stories that start with that phrase.”

She took a deep breath. He arched an eyebrow. 

“ _And_ you’re taking a deep breath? What happened?” 

She’d planned on starting from the beginning and preparing him before dropping the news, but she realized he didn’t need the build-up; he was already anxious enough. 

“Your mum is alive. I saw her in a coffee shop. I’ve been stalking her…well, me and Iris. We went to see her this morning. I slapped her across her face. We talked. And that’s it.”

He stared. Lily stared back. 

“My mother is dead,” he finally said, his voice flat. 

“Actually, no, not so much. Your dad was a huge arse and he beat your mum and you, too, and she snapped one day and literally killed him. Then, to cover what she’d done, she wrote that suicide letter, signed both their names, and used some sort of dark magic to destroy the scene so much that Aurors saw the mess, the letter, and declared the both of them dead. Then she ran off and hid until she thought it was safe to come back. And now she’s here being a bitch instead of there being a bitch.”

“You’re serious.”

Lily nodded. “Yeah. I wish I wasn’t. When I saw her the first time, she looked so familiar, and it bothered me…I didn’t say anything though because I didn’t want to bring any of it up if I wasn’t certain. But I’m certain now. I’ve spoken to her. She’s certainly not dead.”

“And how do you know she’s who she says she is?” he demanded. His voice was a bit shaky. Lily pretended not to notice. 

“Because you two look just alike, Caden. She’s going by the name Sophie. Why would she lie about who she is?” 

“I dunno, maybe— maybe it’s somebody trying to get close to your family through us.”

“We don’t even live here. It wouldn’t be an efficient move,” she countered gently. She was certain he already knew that. “Besides— she didn’t seek us out. I sought her out.”

They held their tense gaze for a few more moments. He stood abruptly. It made Lily’s heart squeeze unpleasantly. 

“Where are you going?” she asked, standing up, too. 

He was already walking away. “I need to walk,” he said, and Lily watched him disappear into the forest, unsure whether or not he’d want her to follow. Going by his stiff posture, she was guessing not. 

* * *

 

“That’s not true.”

“It is! Yes, it is! Dragons can learn English! They can!” Iris persisted. 

Draco looked mildly annoyed. “They _can’t._ They simply do not have the capacity to speak.”

“Nuh-uh. You’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You are! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! You’re _wrong_!”

Draco exchanged an annoyed look with Albus. Lily was so worried about Caden that she didn’t find the situation funny at all (a first.) She walked over, paced uncertainly behind the sofa her children were sitting on for a few seconds, and then decided to sit with them. Part of her wanted to go upstairs and fret, and another part wanted to run after Caden, but she didn’t know which part to indulge, so she went with neither and sat. Elliot and Iris cuddled up to her side at once and continued bickering with Draco. 

“All right, that’s enough,” Ginny finally said, leveling a stern look the twins’ way. They quieted at once. “We can all agree to disagree.”

“We can’t,” Iris hissed to Elliot, but only Lily caught it. 

“Where’s Daddy?” Iris wondered. 

Lily moved her hands up and pressed the twins’ upper backs so they’d lean in. They complied with the pressure of her hand and ducked their heads in front of hers, their ears turned to the side, waiting. 

“I told him,” Lily whispered to her children. 

They both leaned back and gave her comical looks of surprise. “Already?!” 

“Is he angry?” 

“Is he sad?” 

“I dunno,” Lily whispered back. “He went for a walk. I don’t know how he feels yet. Maybe he doesn’t, either. How would you feel?” 

“Angry,” Iris said at once. 

“Sad,” Elliot answered at the same time. 

“Maybe angry-sad,” Iris affirmed. 

“Me too,” Lily agreed. Her worry was gnawing at her stomach. “I wish I hadn’t told him. Do you think I should have?”

“Yes! We gotta ‘cause that’s his mum,” Iris hissed sternly. “She grew him in her tummy and then he came out and he was her entire son.”

To Lily’s shock, Elliot turned to press his face against her neck, and she felt wetness from tears. 

“I-It’s so s-sad,” he cried. 

Lily wrapped her arm tighter around him. “I guess it sort of is.”

“S-She w-was a-alive a-again and s-she n-never e-e-e-e-even came to f-find him!” 

His volume rose in his distress. Lily cradled him even closer, trying to muffle his mouth against her shirt. 

“Shh,” she comforted, petting his hair. She met her dad’s quizzical look. “They didn’t have the broom he wanted at the shop. We had to order it. It won’t be here for a week. It’s all very tragic.”

“Hm.” 

Her dad was certainly onto her, but Lily didn’t have the time to worry about it. She was more worried about her son. He was getting more upset rather than less. 

“A-And h-his Daddy, he w-was so m-mean, and he shook him ’til he almost _died_ —!”

“Er,” Harry said, alarmed. He’d heard that. Lily resisted the urge to swear. 

“There’s some odd stuff going on in the Quidditch shop,” Lily lied. She stood. Iris followed suit, but she had to hoist Elliot up into her arms and prop him on her hip. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” 

“O-O-Okay,” Elliot wept. 

“Can I go get Lyra and see if she wants to come?!” Iris asked excitedly. 

“Nope. Rowle walk. Just Rowles. Is she a Rowle?” 

Iris thought. “I dunno ‘cause she came from your egg and you are one. Is she?” 

Lily sighed. “No, Iris. Just c’mon, Merlin…”

Her dad stood. “I’ll come with you. Here, I’ll carry Elliot…c’mere, El, what’s wrong?”

Lily twisted her upper body away when her dad reached for Elliot. “No, thanks, I’ve got it. He just wants his mummy. Right, Elliot?” 

Elliot didn’t answer, but he tightened his hold around Lily’s neck to the point that she choked and she had to pry his arms back a bit. 

“Okay, bye!” Lily told her dad and Draco. She raised her voice. “BYE, MUM AND LYRA, WHEREVER YOU TWO ARE!” 

Lily and the twins made their way outside. Lily had mostly just wanted to give Elliot a quiet place to calm down, but as soon as they were out there, Iris set determinedly towards the forest. 

“Iris,” Lily warned. “He might want space.”

“Or maybe he wants a hug. You dunno because we haven’t asked him,” she pointed out. 

Lily’s arms were already aching from carrying Elliot, but she knew Iris was right. She groaned. “Fine. Hike it is. Elliot, you’re going to need to get this softhearted shit together fast because I can’t carry you the entire way. Look at me.” He did. His eyes were streaming with tears. “Daddy’s fine. He’s very happy. He’s got a hot wife, adorable kids, plenty of money, he works from home— he’s fine. Take a deep breath and get yourself together.”

“O-O-Okay,” he repeated. 

Lily sighed again. She leaned in and kissed between his eyebrows. “It’s okay. I promise. I wouldn’t lie about that.”

It took another minute or so, but he somewhat composed himself and squirmed until Lily set him back on the ground. Iris took his hand at once. He gripped hers tightly and sniffled as they started walking into the forest. Lily really had no idea which way he’d gone. She just hoped they’d wander upon him at some point. 

* * *

“Daddy!!”

Lily felt relief pierce through her chest at the sight of her husband, sitting despondently on a fallen trunk. He turned at the sound of the twins’ cries. Lily didn’t know whether she was relieved or not to find his face free from tears. 

“You’ve found me, I see,” he commented. A second later, the twins reached him. They hugged onto his legs. They didn’t waste any time. 

“It’s okay, Daddy,” Iris soothed, while Elliot patted Caden’s knee nicely. “We would never leave you.”

“Not ever in a hundred years!”

“Now you’re just trying to upset him,” Lily quipped, hoping to lighten the mood. 

“Nuh-uh!” the twins refuted, not the least bit bothered by Lily’s teasing. 

“Oh, I know you wouldn’t,” Caden told them. He leaned over and kissed the tops of their heads. “Thanks.”

“Are you sad?” Elliot asked probingly. 

“Are you angry?” Iris questioned next. 

Caden looked helpless for a brief moment. It pained Lily. 

“Leave your dad alone,” she said at once, firmly. “Sometimes people don’t know how they feel about something.” 

“Daddy, I can tell Albus and we can put her in prison for what she did,” Iris told Caden seriously. 

“For being a murderer?” Elliot questioned Iris. 

“For leaving Daddy! And I guess for being a murderer, too.”

“Murderer is a harsh word,” Lily heard herself say. “She did it to protect her son.”

“Would you do that to protect us?” Iris wondered. 

Lily didn’t even have to think about it. “Without a doubt.”

Caden stood. “Come on,” he said, nudging the twins so they stood, too. “Let’s go back to the Den.”

“You feel better?” Elliot asked hopefully. 

Caden’s smile was tight. “Yeah. Loads now that you’re here.”

Elliot and Iris beamed. They grabbed onto Caden’s hands and chattered at him the entire walk back, the difficult situation seemingly forgotten. But Lily didn’t miss the tense hold of Caden’s shoulders the entire walk. 

* * *

She couldn’t say a word to Caden about it until bedtime because they spent the rest of the night with the Potter-Malfoys. It was eating away at her more and more with each minute that passed so that by the time they were finally alone, she was nearly squirming with impatience. 

“Talk to me,” she pleaded. She wasn’t used to having to ask _him_ that. “Are you angry with _me_?” 

“No. I’m not,” he reassured her. He sat on the end of the bed. “I don’t know what to feel. I can’t believe it. I don’t think I do.”

“She’s absolutely—”

“I’m not doubting _you_ ,” Caden reassured her, cutting off her defense. “I just think I need to see her and speak with her to believe it.”

Lily felt apprehensive. “Talk to her? You?” 

“Yes.” 

Ridiculously, she hated the idea of that so much she shifted in place again, this time out of discomfort. She walked over to him and sat beside him. She reached for his hands and held them. 

“Can I come?” 

He smiled slightly. “To protect me, I’m guessing.”

She was unabashed. “Yes.” It wasn’t physical protection she thought he needed, though. His frail mother couldn’t overpower him. It was emotional protection. She wanted to make sure that, if the woman was horrid to him, that he had solid proof beside him that he was loved. And he wasn’t always as quick to bat-bogey as Lily felt a person should be, so there was that, too. 

“Yeah. You can come,” he agreed. 

“When do you want to go?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve got to sleep on it.”

Lily nodded. She leaned her head against his shoulder. To her, it was the most outrageous thing in the world to think of his mother tossing him to the side like she’d done. There were plenty of times that her own children aggravated her to near insanity, but she couldn’t say she ever had the genuine urge to run off and be without them for the rest of her life. That would have been devastating. 

And to be the one abandoned…what must _that_ feel like?

* * *

 

Lily was the first up the next morning. She Floo’d to Albus and Scorpius’s to use their fancy coffee machine— they’d stayed the night at the Den so Lyra could have a ‘pajama party’ with the twins— and then, when she returned, she found she wasn’t alone downstairs any longer. 

“Good morning, Lyra,” she greeted. Lyra was yawning into her little hand, her hair sticking out in a million different directions. Lily carried her coffee over and sat in the seat beside Lyra’s. Lyra turned and crawled onto Lily’s lap at once, incredibly cuddly due to her sleepiness. Lily felt her heart warm as she enveloped her in her arms in response. For at least five minutes, Lyra didn’t do much but doze tiredly in Lily’s arms, and Lily didn’t do much but sip at her coffee and enjoy the calm affection the two were sharing. It was an unrushed, tender moment, the sort the two of them rarely shared due to the simple fact that when Lily was around, the twins were around, and Lyra was usually playing nonstop with them. And, if Lily was being honest, she was always worried that if she showed too much affection that Albus would get upset with her, as if she were trying to claim mummy rights over Lyra any time she hugged her too enthusiastically. She felt great pressure to carry their lie on her back; she felt it was often up to her to establish boundaries within her relationship with Lyra. She had to treat her _precisely_ the way she treated Finnigan or any other niece or nephew. But it _wasn’t_ the same. She didn’t love Lyra the same way she loved her twins— not even close— but she did feel a type of connection with her that she didn’t feel with James and Nora’s kids. She knew it had something to do with _belonging_. No matter what she logically thought and felt, there was a part of her that knew Lyra was part of her, and that mattered. She could never admit that to anybody, though. As far as her family was concerned, Lyra was her niece and the way she’d come about meant nothing to Lily. 

(But it did mean something. Because creating Lyra had created everything. Had Lily never done that, she never would’ve had her twins, either. Lyra was the start, and sometimes, Lily felt that made her an integral part of her family’s history.)

Lily had no interest in breaking their comfortable silence so she didn’t say a word until Lyra did, and Lyra didn’t say a word until nearly fifteen minutes had passed. After that, she seemed to finally rouse enough to sit up and focus on the world around her. She rubbed her eyes and yawned again. 

“Can I tell you something?” she asked Lily around a yawn. 

Lily nodded at once. “Of course. Anything.”

Lyra looked bashful a second later. “I stayed up very late last night. I’m not supposed to do that. I sneaked.”

Lily smiled. “You and the twins were playing, I’m guessing?” 

Lyra nodded.

“What’s ‘very’ late, exactly?” Lily wondered. “Three? Four?”

Lyra’s eyes widened in horror. “No! A half-hour after midnight.” 

Lily’s lips twitched. She had to work hard to keep from laughing at that. “Oh. Wow.”

Lyra yawned again. “I’m not supposed to do that,” she said again, worried. 

Lily patted her back. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Papa or Daddy.”

Lyra sighed. “I’ve got to tell them because we don’t have secrets. I think maybe they’ll be upset with me.”

Lily shook her head at once. “No they won’t. When have they ever been upset with you? You’re coddled beyond belief. Don’t worry.”

Lily pulled her wand out of her pocket and summoned a hairbrush. She set to work pulling through Lyra’s tangled hair as Lyra continued their conversation. 

“I think Daddy was mad at me before,” Lyra admitted. “When I knew about me being a half-sister.”

Lily’s heart jumped. She realized that she and Lyra had _never_ discussed this together before; any discussion on the matter had happened with both their families present and Albus and Scorpius dominating the conversation. Lily knew Albus would be _furious_ if he knew she’d spoken with Lyra about it, but didn’t Lyra have a right to speak about her own life with whoever she pleased?

“He was never angry with you. I promise. He was angry with me. _Extremely_ fucking angry,” Lily corrected. She paused as she reached a particularly horrible knot in Lyra’s hair. She lifted her wand again, directed a cloud of warm conditioning mist at it, and then carefully pulled through it. Lyra was incredibly patient; she didn’t pull away, or swear, or run away crying like Iris did whenever anybody but her mum tried to brush her hair.

“Because he was afraid for me to know,” Lyra nodded. “He didn’t want me to wish you were my dad—mum— _parent_ instead.”

Lily was shocked to hear that. It wasn’t that she didn’t think that was where Albus’s insecurity had lied all along— she’d always known that— but she was shocked he’d actually opened up and told Lyra that. She was a bit impressed, too. 

“He told you that?” 

Lyra nodded. “I told him he’s my best friend.”

“Did that make him feel better?” 

“Yes, I think so,” she answered seriously. 

Lily finished brushing through Lyra’s hair. As soon as she was done, Lyra leaned back against her chest. Lily hesitantly held her again. 

“Lyra,” she said, and then she stopped. She felt she was balancing on a tight-rope. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “I think it’s very lucky for you that Albus is your dad. But don’t ever tell him I said that, okay?” 

Lyra tipped her head back and looked up at Lily. She squinted at her. Lily recognized the furrow to her brows; she saw it on Elliot’s little face every day. She reached for her wand again and summoned Lyra’s glasses from upstairs. As soon as she caught them in her hand, she slid them gently onto Lyra’s face. 

“Why?” Lyra asked. 

Lily swallowed hard. She was surprised at the emotion she felt charging its way up her throat. “Because he’s a better dad than I am a mum, by far. He’s loads better at it. And I think your life is better for it. And when I agreed to help your daddy and papa…when I agreed to give them the egg that was ultimately the Lyra-egg…I did it because I knew you would always be taken care of, and that’s what I always wanted.”

Lyra thought about that much more intently than five-year-olds should’ve been able to think about things. 

“But I love you, Lulu. I think you’re a good mummy,” she said sweetly. 

Lily smiled at once. She squeezed Lyra tighter for a moment. “I love you, too,” she said, and as she did, she realized that was the first time she had _ever_ said those exact words to Lyra before. She had been very careful before then, always saying ‘me too’ back when Lyra declared her love, always directing the ‘I love yous’ to _all_ the kids rather than just Lyra herself. It felt freeing to finally be able to admit what was on her heart without her brother making her feel like a child-snatching villain for it. 

“You’re just lucky, Lyra,” Lily continued. “I just want to make sure you know that.” 

 _I don’t ever want you to feel abandoned. I don’t ever want you to feel like you were cast away by me._ As soon as she had those thoughts, she realized her sudden tenderness on this topic definitely had something to do with what was going on with her husband. 

“Oh, I know,” Lyra reassured her brightly. “I’ve got so much love.”

Lily laughed softly. “That’s true. You do have that.”

“I’ve got my daddy, my papa, my granddad, my Harry and Ginny, my Lulu, my Cade, Gemma, Auntie Nora, Uncle James, Iris and sometimes Elliot, Benji, Evra, Remus, Teddy, Rosie and Iset, Finnigan, Henry, Rory, Delilah, Aunt Hermione, Uncle Ron, Hugo and Aster and Dahlia, Gran Molly, Grandad Arthur, Georgie and —”

Lyra’s list of people who loved her was so long that she wasn’t able to finish before someone interrupted her. 

“MUMMY, THIS FUCKING OWL PECKED MY FACE!”

Lily never really knew how her mornings would start, but seeing her daughter holding a furious owl in her hands while sporting a bloody wound above her eyebrow was not exactly what she’d expected. 

“Where the hell did that owl come from?” Lily demanded, baffled. She stood up, marched over to her daughter, and held her hands out. She received the owl gently but firmly. Her daughter was trembling with indignation and looking up at Lily expectantly. Lily knew she wanted her mum to stick up for her, so Lily lifted the owl up to eye level and demanded. “What’d you do that for, you feathery bitch?! Don’t you dare peck my child! What’s wrong with you?!” 

Iris relaxed. She reached up and pressed a hand over her wound, nodding along with Lily’s scolding. 

“It _hurts_ ,” she said angrily. 

Lily shifted the owl and plucked the letter from the case hooked to its leg. She held it up. It was from the Ministry and addressed to her father. She looked at the owl. 

“Does my daughter _look_ like Harry James Potter to you?! For Christ’s sake…c’mon, I’m taking you to my dad and he can deal with this…”

As soon as she was on the stairs and her daughter was out of sight, she opened her hands so the owl was sitting in her palms. She pet its head gently with one finger. Thankfully, it didn’t look too ruffled. 

“You can’t peck kids, you dolt,” she whispered to it. “That’s how owls get killed on the job.” 

It hooted indignantly. 

“Yes, I know their window was open. That wasn’t an invitation for post. They just wanted the fresh air. You could’ve just left the letter on the bedside table! You didn't have to peck her.”

It hooted even louder. It turned its wide eyes to the letter in Lily’s hand. Lily paused halfway up the stairs and looked at the envelope. She spotted the red lettering almost immediately. _OPEN AT ONCE._

“Oh,” she realized. “You were supposed to make sure it was read before you left. But you got the wrong person. I’m taking you to the _right_ person now.”

She knocked once on her parents’ closed bedroom door. When she didn’t receive any sort of response, she knocked again, harder. 

“Don’t make me open it,” she whined. “I don’t know what I’m walking into.”

There was a pause and then she heard approaching footsteps. The door opened. Her dad blinked tiredly at her, his glasses askew and his hair messier than usual. 

“It’s not even six yet,” he complained. “What? Are the grandkids okay?” 

“No, this owl pecked Iris so hard she’s bleeding. It was her face, too. Take it.” Lily thrust the owl out. It hopped willingly into Harry’s hands, though Harry was confused. He fixed his glasses and examined the owl, and then he sighed. “Slobodan. They’re _still_ sending you out even after your accident? Young has a soft spot for you.” 

The owl hooted, but this time it was soft and affectionate. Lily shook her head. 

“You should probably tell Young his owl pecked Harry Potter’s granddaughter in her face while she was sleeping.”

“Yeah, he’s not supposed to be sent to anybody who lives with anybody else,” Harry agreed around a yawn. “He’s got eyesight problems and gets people confused. What do you have for me, Slobodan?” 

He took the letter, opened the flap, and pulled it out right then and there. Lily waited, curious as to what the Ministry was sending her retired father so early in the morning. He’d only been reading for a second or two when his posture completely changed. His breath left him like he’d been hit. Lily felt a chill of foreboding. 

“What?” she asked at once. 

He didn’t answer: he was still reading. The more he read, the more worried he seemed to get. Finally, he looked up at Lily. 

“Another child’s been kidnapped. It’s Mae, she’s— she goes to Lyra’s school, they’re in the same year, they play together all the time…she was taken from her bed— I’ve got to go.”

Lily was certain he was feeling the same instinctual fear she felt as a parent at the thought of somebody coming into one’s house at night and taking somebody’s child. She was glad that he was going to the Ministry; if that was her child, she wouldn’t want anybody but her dad on the case. 

“I’ll tell Mum where you’ve gone,” Lily assured him. He wasn’t even bothering to change from his pajama bottoms. He hurried downstairs, Lily following after him, and threw a traveling cloak on. He grabbed the Floo pot without saying another word and rushed off. Lily blinked at the spot he’d been, her heart pounding. At once, she wanted to gather her children and go back home to her sanctuary. But she knew that was cowardly. 

Lyra and Iris were giggling at the table with a packet of biscuits when Lily walked back into the kitchen. They looked up. 

“What did the letter say?” Iris asked curiously. She had blood dripping into her eyebrow and almost into her eye. Lily walked over with heavy steps and sat beside her little girl. She pulled her wand out, disinfected the wound, rinsed the blood away, and mended it. She couldn’t meet Lyra’s eyes. She didn’t want to tell her her friend had been taken. 

“I dunno,” she lied instead. She suddenly felt the need to put eyes on her son. “Let’s go wake Elliot up. We can all four make breakfast for Ginny, Cade, Albus, and Scorpius. It’ll be a surprise.”

Her voice wasn’t very enthusiastic, but the girls managed to infuse the room with enough on their own. They chatted excitedly the entire walk up to the guest room. Lily’s heart was pounding with paranoia. She caught herself fearing she’d open the door and find his bed empty, and as she did, she felt a wave of paralyzing horror that made her feel sick. Her hand was weak as she turned the doorknob and opened the grandkids’ guest room. When she spotted Elliot’s copper hair peeking up from above the blankets, her relief came out of her in an audible gasp. She crossed the room, fell down onto the edge of the bed, and pulled him up into her arms. He stirred as she hugged him tightly. 

“You’re squeezing the life outta me,” he complained tiredly. 

Lily loosened her arms a bit, but she didn’t let him go. “Come downstairs. You can sleep on the sofa if you’re still tired. Or you can help us make breakfast.”

He looped his arms around her neck— a silent request to be carried. Lily obliged where she ordinarily might not have. She hoisted him up and carried him down to the sofa. He rested for a couple minutes more, but then he heard his sister and Lyra giggling as they started breakfast with Lily, and he joined them. 

Lily dreaded telling Albus and Scorpius what had happened. If _she_ was reacting with this much worry, she was certain they would go mad. But of course they came downstairs before Ginny did, so that by the time she inquired where Harry had gone, Lily had no choice but to answer in front of them. 

“He got a letter from the Ministry early this morning—”

“The fucking bird pecked my eye!” Iris interrupted. 

“What?! Was it that one bird…Slopedan?”

“Slobodan,” Lily affirmed. 

“He’s pecked me before too. Poor dear. He had an accident on the job when Harry was still an Auror.” Ginny took a sip of her tea. “What did the Ministry want?”

Lily hesitated. She glanced Albus and Scorpius’s way. They were sitting on either side of Lyra, happily eating breakfast, laughing at whatever Lyra and Elliot were currently talking about. She sighed and looked back at her mum. 

“There was another kidnapping,” she admitted quietly. 

Not quietly enough. Her brothers’ heads spun in her direction immediately. 

“What?” Albus said, his voice low and severe. Scorpius wrapped his arm around Lyra. “When?” 

“Last night at some point, I think,” she answered reluctantly. “They took the child from her bed.”

She didn’t want to say that it was Mae in front of Lyra so she left that part out. She gave her brothers a meaningful look, though, and as soon as Lyra was looking back at Iris and Elliot, she mouthed Mae’s name. Scorpius paled spectacularly. Albus stood at once. 

“I’m going,” he told them. His hands were shaking as he yanked a cloak on. He didn’t even notice it was their dad’s and not his. 

“I’m coming along,” Ginny declared. “I want to see how the _Prophet_ is handling this.”

Lily wanted to be in the action, too, but she had little desire to leave her kids alone, and she didn’t think the Ministry would like it if she brought them with her. And anyway, she had another problem to deal with that day— Sophie. Once she remembered that, she felt stress and worry crash back over her again. And to think she’d thought the biggest problem they’d encounter on their England trip would be Elliot and Lyra’s bickering. 

The stressed-out way the adults had responded to the news of the kidnapping certainly had the children focused on the issue, too.

“Nobody’s taking _us_ ,” Elliot told Iris bravely. 

“Grown-ups are bigger than you,” Lyra reminded them. She looked a little worried. How much worse would she feel when she found out it was her best friend who’d gotten taken?

“Yeah, but we can do _this_ ,” Elliot said, and then he elbowed Iris until she set her coffee down. Lily watched on as Elliot stared hard at a napkin Albus had left on his plate. His brows pursed down in intense concentration. Lily lifted her eyebrows as he made it hover above the plate, impressed. But he wasn’t done. It floated over towards him and Iris, and Iris stared hard at it, too, and before Lily could even anticipate what they were trying to do, the napkin caught flame. Scorpius gasped. Lily was stunned.

“What the fuck! I didn’t know you two could do that! That’s brilliant, why didn’t you show me that before?!” Lily demanded. She extinguished the napkin with a lazy flick of her wand. It fell smoldering to the tabletop. Her twins were beaming. 

“It was a surprise! We’ve been practicing and practicing! We want to be just like dragons,” Elliot boasted. 

“That’s what we’re going to do if somebody tries to take us,” Iris told them all seriously. 

Lyra held onto her papa’s arm tightly. “Papa,” she whispered quietly, her voice hardly audible. “I don’t want to be taken.”

Scorpius twisted, flailed his arms a bit in panic, and then crushed Lyra to his chest in a tight, panicked hug. 

“You won’t be! Ever! Not ever! Don’t worry about that, pumpkin, you’ll never, ever be taken from us!” 

She still looked a bit unsettled. Lily couldn’t blame her. It was every child’s instinctual fear— being taken by someone malicious and separated from their parents, their safe place— and even she could remember worrying about it some as a child, and she couldn’t recall a single kidnapping case in the wizarding world during her childhood. To have it happen in your community, and to your best friend no less…that would certainly frighten a child. 

“We can teach you our trick,” Elliot offered kindly. “It’s safe, you’ve just gotta remember not to set big things on fire, only small things, or else the fire can get bigger than you and stronger than you and hurt people.”

“That’s a great idea,” Lily encouraged. “Why don’t you three go into the sitting room and practice? You can set little bits of paper on fire and then put them in the fireplace to burn out.”

The twins seemed thrilled to be given permission to practice their pyromania. They nodded and hopped from their seats at once. Lyra looked reluctant to follow at first, but then Scorpius smiled and nodded at her and she slid from her seat as well. As soon as the three were safely in the sitting room, Lily turned to Scorpius. 

“I’m freaked out,” he admitted, his voice strained. “Why would somebody take somebody’s _child?_ And Mae…why her? I don’t understand.”

“I dunno,” Lily said, uneasy, too. “And we have such few magical children left in our society as it is.”

An odd look covered Scorpius’s face. “Do you think that’s it, then? Do you think this has something to do with them being magical?” 

Lily hadn’t really thought of that. As soon as she did, a thrill of dread ran through her. The twins and Lyra, as well as most of James’s lot, would fit that profile if it were true, if the kidnapper(s) were targeting the only magical children left in their society. 

“Maybe. I dunno,” she said again. “Maybe it’s those Free Magic nutters trying to prove a point, like ‘hey, if everybody can’t have magical children, nobody can.’ It doesn’t make much sense, but I don’t think many of their stances do.”

“Or,” Scorpius challenged, worried, “it could be blood purists kidnapping magical children to try and blame it on the Free Magics. ‘See how evil these Free Magics are? They want to steal magical ability from us and they’ll do anything it takes— even steal our children to further their means’.”

Lily had glanced to the sitting room to try and peek and check on the kids, but at that, she whipped her head around and looked at Scorpius. She felt sick. 

“What if that _is_ what they’re doing with the kids? With the magical little boy taken a couple years ago and with Mae? What if it is the Free Magics and they’re experimenting on them to see how to replicate magical ability or…” she trailed off. The thought was just so horrible. She wanted to be sick thinking about one of hers locked up somewhere at the mercy of some madman. 

“I don’t want to think about it,” Scorpius said, anguished. “Maybe Mae just snuck out of her room. Maybe she wasn’t even taken at all…”

“Maybe,” Lily agreed, but she didn’t think so. 

She heard Caden’s voice as he came downstairs and greeted the kids. As soon as he walked in, he stopped dead in the doorway, his eyes sweeping from Lily’s face to Scorpius’s. He sighed. 

“What now?” 

Lily patted the seat between her and Scorpius. 

* * *

 

It was one thing to send her twins out to roam the sanctuary property or the Den property. In those situations, she only had to trust her children, her fellow dragonologists and dragon keepers, or her family, and those were all people she placed a massive amount of trust in. 

It was another thing to send her twins out to roam in public, with groups of strangers she’d never be able to trust, any of which who could be responsible for kidnapping. 

She had done it before in the small, safe communities at home in New Zealand, both muggle and magical, but when the twins asked to run off to the joke shop alone that day while they were walking down Diagon Alley, Lily caught herself doing something she never did: fretting. 

“No,” she said at once, sternly. “You stay here with us.”

The twins looked as if she’d clobbered them over the head with something particularly heavy. 

“What?” Iris said, baffled. 

“But we want to!” Elliot whined. 

“Your mum said no,” Caden repeated firmly. He reached out and took Elliot’s hand, sensing that he looked likely to flee in protest. “It’s not safe. Someone’s kidnapping kids, remember?” 

“But they’re not gonna get _us_ ,” Iris whined. “We can protect ourselves…please, Mummy? We want to go to George and Ron’s shop!” 

“We’ll all go together on the way back.” She caught Iris’s petulant look before it intensified. “Have a strop all you like, but we’re not changing our minds. People are mad here now.”

“Well I want to go _home_ ,” Iris snapped. “There’s too many rules here—” 

Elliot nodded along emphatically. “Like you can’t say ‘fuck’ or ‘twat’—”

“And there are insane people that are stealing other people’s kids—”

“And an entire grandmother that comed back from the dead!”

“Nothing makes sense,” Iris whined, “and the fish here tastes soggy and sad.”

“And we’ve gotta wear shoes all the time, and there’s so many people, and I miss our dragons!”

“That’s quite a list,” commented Caden. Lily snorted. She and her husband exchanged a quick eye-roll. “But you’re forgetting some other things that ‘here’ has.”

“Like what?” 

“Oh, I don’t know…Harry, Ginny, Lyra, Albus, Scorpius, Hugo, Aster, Dahlia, James, Nora, Evra, Finnigan, Henry, Rory, Delilah, Benji—”

“Yeah no, it’s best when _they_ come to _us_ ,” Iris said. “‘Cause then home has all of them, _and_ our dragons, _and_ everything makes sense.”

“So you want everybody to have to come visit us every single time?” Caden clarified. The twins nodded. “That doesn’t sound fair.”

“It does! ‘Cause our lives and our home is the best one, so really we’re being nice!”

Lily thought of their home, tucked on the outskirts of the sanctuary lands. In comparison to Albus and Scorpius’s grandiose, sleek Kensington dwelling, their home was chaotic and gaudy, with spontaneous pops of bright color, a generous hoard of clutter, eclectic odds and ends, and a careless organization system that could best be summed up as ‘it goes where it falls.’ Lily thought most people would probably find it nightmarish in comparison to the former home. But she believed her children when they declared it _the best_. She thought that way of it, too. Her and Caden’s bedroom might’ve been littered with shoes and laundry on the floor, scratches on the hardwood from Big Boy’s nails, and a chronically unmade bed, but there was nothing better than being _home_ , in her and Caden’s bed, preferably fucking him, surrounded by the mess and the chaos that was theirs. She had never longed for anything different in the past half-decade. 

“She’s onto something, Caden,” Lily said, half-sarcastic, half-serious. 

They were meeting Sophie at that same coffee shop in Hogsmeade later that afternoon (Caden had thought it would be best to meet in public; Lily was certain there was still a part of him that thought Sophie was a random, psychotic liar bent on getting close to their family), but they were getting lunch in Diagon Alley at their preferred pub before that. They sat at a table, received their drinks, and placed their lunch orders before the twins’ talk turned back to the kidnapping. Part of Lily wished they’d never heard, but then again, she always found life easier when she didn’t have to keep things from them. 

“Maybe they should get help from the muggle policemen,” Elliot suggested. “They have _loads_ of nutters in the muggle world!”

“Do they now?” Caden asked. “Who told you that?” 

“Yes they do!” Iris agreed. “We see all about them on _True Crime.”_

Lily was confused. “On what?”

“The program on the telly in Lon’s tattoo parlor,” Elliot explained. “Every time you get tattoos, Iris and me sit on the sofa and we watch _True Crime_ with the muggles waiting for their tattoo turn. It’s all about people getting slashed and murdered and tied up and kidnapped.”

Caden’s lips turned down in a grimace. Lily scowled. 

“You little fucking liars! You always tell me you’re reading while I’m getting tattooed! You’re sitting on a dirty sofa with random muggle adults watching murder shows?!”

“Sometimes we eat food, too. But only when somebody brings some with them.” 

“And you’re taking food from strangers. Lovely,” Caden muttered. He reached out and grabbed Lily’s knee. She looked at him. “I think they should stay with me the next time you’re getting tattooed.”

“No!!” Iris and Elliot protested. 

Lily gave Caden a look that said _let’s let it go for now._ Thankfully, he obliged. 

“So you think the muggles could help us, do you?” he asked the twins. 

They nodded in sync. 

“Yes, they know all about kidnapping, and their policemen aren’t lazy like Aurors are.”

“Harsh,” Lily appreciated. 

“‘Cept one time, on _True Crime,_ there was a policeman and he had a wife who had glasses like yours, Mummy, and he had a little girl and a little baby and then one day some man sent him letters saying he was going to kill him and the evil man had a _really deep voice like this_ —” Elliot lowered his voice as low as he possibly could; Lily choked on her water— “and the man, he sent his family far away, and then the evil man fed their big dog so it wouldn’t bark at him so he could sneak up on the man— that scared us ‘cause what if somebody fed Big Boy and then maybe he wouldn’t protect us from strangers?—and then one night the evil man threw bombs into the house and he tied the policeman up like a hog and he used a knife and cut these triangles all on his back but the man rolled out of the window and he was saved but then, guess what?!” 

Caden was taking a notably long sip of his beer. Lily wasn’t even sure how to respond to Elliot’s spiel. 

“I honestly don’t know, Elliot. What?” 

Elliot threw his hands up in the air incredulously. His glasses slipped a bit on his nose as he widened his eyes. “He faked the whole thing! He cut himself and set his own house on fire! ‘Cause he was doing private things with a lady who wasn’t his wife and he wanted to run away with her.”

“That’s…” Caden trailed off. 

“Interesting,” Lily finished for him. “I’m not sure I think we should trust these muggle policemen now, though. That’s mad.”

“He did a good job faking, though,” Iris said fairly. 

“If he did a good job, he wouldn’t’ve been caught,” Lily corrected. 

“Oh, yeah,” Iris agreed. 

“My dad will find her,” Lily said confidently. “They were right to send him a letter. _He’ll_ find her.”

“I hope so because I’m sad for her,” Elliot told them. Caden patted his shoulder consolingly. 

“I’m worried about Lyra,” Iris confided. Lily glanced over at her. She was sighing and swishing the water in her glass around with magic without even realizing it. “If somebody comes for her, she’s a goner. She told us that throwing burning things at kidnappers is bad manners, but you know what I think?”

“What?” Caden asked. 

“I think stealing kids is bad manners.”

Lily laughed. She reached over and pulled Iris in for a one-armed hug. “I agree with you. If anybody ever tries to take you, you can throw as many burning things at them as you like.”

Iris nodded happily. 

* * *

 

Lily was surprised to find that the urge to slap Sophie was still there when she saw her again. She’d hoped that first time had gotten it out of her system, but going by the pent up energy in her joints, not so much. She took her twins’ hands in hers just to keep her hands busy. Maybe Caden would lose his temper for one of the only times and hit her…that’d be _perfect_. 

Sophie rose as they approached. If there was anything more awkward that Lily had ever lived through, she couldn’t recall it, and she had carried twins for Christ’s sake. Sophie’s fingers curled and uncurled over and over again where her hands hung at her side. Lily wondered whether she was trying to decide whether or not to shake his hand. Shaking your son’s hand in greeting felt…shit. But not greeting him was worse, wasn’t it? She better not go in for a hug…

“Hello,” Caden greeted, and Lily could tell from one quick look at his face that the sight of her and their familial resemblance had already dispelled all his suspicions. He looked sad for it. 

“Hi,” she said. Her voice was a bit trembly. She hadn’t been like that when Lily had talked to her, and Lily had lost her temper and everything. It was curious to her. Was Sophie so nervous because this was her long-lost child? Or was she nervous because Caden looked like his father?

“Hi again,” Elliot greeted cheerfully. He held out a half-crushed weed. “I picked this for you.”

Lily wanted terribly to reach out and snatch it from his hand. Sophie didn’t deserve anything from the twins. But she didn’t want to punish Elliot for Sophie’s shittiness so she grit her teeth and waited as Sophie tentatively took the dandelion from his hand. 

“How lovely, thank you,” she said kindly.

Iris was pointedly looking away from Sophie, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She still hadn’t forgotten what Sophie had done to her dad, then. Good. 

Caden was the first to sit at the table. They all followed suit. Lily had to yank Elliot back so she could be the one to sit beside Caden, but then she pulled him down to sit in her lap so neither of them went to sit in the fourth seat beside Sophie. Iris had already leaned against the side of Caden’s seat, her suspicious eyes trained on Sophie. Caden wrapped an arm around her shoulders; Lily knew it was partially to make sure she stayed there. 

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Lily’s husband said, his voice crisp and business-like, and that was when Lily knew this was hurting him. The more upset he became about something, the more professional he sounded (until he had no more emotional control left to pile on top of his emotions, and then he snapped. She was sort of hoping for that now as much as she was fearing it for his sake.)

“I feel like I should be the one saying that,” Sophie admitted sheepishly. She took a deep breath against the awkwardness that was permeating the table in the most real and horrible way, looked at Iris, and said: “I love your plaits.”

 _A hair compliment. Fuck._ Lily had been glad that there was one other person at the table holding onto their punishing feelings, but hair compliments were her and her daughter’s Achilles heel. She looked at Iris. Iris smiled quickly, reached up to pat at her pretty, intertwining plaits, and then said: “Thank you. My mummy did them.”

“That was very kind of her,” Sophie said gently. She talked to the twins like Lily might talk to newborn dragons. It was weird. 

“Yep,” Iris agreed. “She can do that ‘cause she never left me.”

Lily pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, fighting the urge to laugh aloud at Iris’s comeback. Elliot snickered delightedly. Caden leaned in and whispered something to Iris that Lily didn’t catch, but going by Iris’s deep, annoyed sigh, he’d told her to be nice. Why he wanted Iris to be kind to a woman who’d left him with wrinkly Satan (his grandfather) Lily didn’t know, but this was _his_ situation, so if he wanted them to be nice, Lily would do her best. 

“I didn’t believe my wife at first. I thought you had tricked her,” Caden admitted. 

Lily felt as smug then as she always felt when Caden used the w-word. She was quite proud to lay claim on him, and now was no exception. 

“Is tricking her possible?” Sophie asked lightly. Lily thought that was a fair point, but she kept her face determinedly neutral. 

Caden laughed a bit. It surprised Lily. She snapped her head to the side to look at him. 

“I’ll get back to you when I’ve found the answer to that.”

Sophie’s smile was hesitant. Lily was getting annoyed with all the polite small-chat. Elliot clearly was too; he began squirming and asking to go to the joke shop in Lily’s ear only a moment later. She shook her head firmly. 

“I’m who I say I am,” Sophie finally said, a bit apologetically. “I can prove it to you. I have photos of you that you would never have seen before since I took them with me. I have your birth documents. I’ll take a genetic screening potion at St. Mungo’s, too, if you like.”

He didn’t agree to those, but he didn’t say no, either. There was another heavy, awkward pause. Elliot sighed to fill the silence. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Caden admitted. “I thought you were dead.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said. Lily felt an apology should have been what she started with, but whatever. She half-listened as Sophie retold her story to Caden, focusing more on trying to keep Elliot calm and reined in than anything else. He was really suffering in the awkwardness. Iris, on the other hand, was watching Sophie somewhat calmly, her head resting against Caden’s arm. 

“Can’t you just sit still like your sister?” Lily hissed at Elliot. 

“No! I’m bored!” 

“Well, so am I, but I’ve got to sit still, too,” she shot back. “Ease the fuck up.”

He sighed and turned to hide his face into her top. “I’ll nap, then,” he mumbled, his voice muffled. 

Lily stroked his hair. “Sure, good idea.”

When Sophie finished, Caden was quiet and contemplative. 

“I think I remember a bit of that. The book you were reading to me before it happened— I bought that book when Lily was pregnant with the twins. I remembered something when I was reading it.”

Sophie grimaced. “I’m sorry. I hoped you wouldn’t remember any of it.”

“It’s something quite traumatizing to expect it to be forgotten.”

“I know. But I hoped, for your sake.”

Lily wanted to snap and say a million things, but she dug her nails into her thigh and seethed silently instead. When she glanced over at her daughter, she was glaring hard at Sophie, her little hands in fists at her sides. Lily felt a crushing wave of affection for Iris. If her five-year-old could control her anger, Lily could, too. 

“I want to understand,” Caden said evenly. Lily noticed he hadn’t looked away from his mum once. She, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to meet his eyes: she was looking above his head, beside it, around them…anywhere but directly into his eyes. “Did you realize who I would be stuck with?” 

Her pause was painful. “Yes. Your father—”

“He’s not my father. I never knew him.”

It was the shortest Lily had heard his tone since they got here. Sophie nodded quickly. 

“Of course. _Thorfinn_ chose them to be your guardians should anything happen to us. To make sure you were raised a Rowle.” There was a short pause. “I have a sister. I always wanted…but I had no ability to change anything. It all happened so suddenly.”

Lily had to physically bite her tongue. 

“So you just hoped it would all turn out all right. You never tried to check up on me, or find a way to make different arrangements for me, or even come back to speak with me and ask me what _I_ wanted?” Caden asked. 

 _Finally,_ Lily thought _._

Sophie opened and closed her mouth wordlessly for a few seconds. “I…you were…Caden, you were only a child. I couldn’t ask you that.”

His gaze turned cold. Lily relished in it. She wanted him to rip into Sophie in the articulated, even-toned way that only Caden could tear into somebody. He wouldn’t raise his voice, but Sophie would lie awake at night feeling like a prick for months anyway. That’s what she deserved. 

“Children are people,” he said. “They have thoughts, and opinions, and preferences. That’s why my children are here: their feelings and their opinions on things matter to me. Because they’re _people_ , with their own lives, and the things that I do impact them. The things that _you_ did impacted me. They changed my entire life for the worst. I would have wanted a say in that. Had you shown up out of the blue when I was five and told me who you were and asked me what I wanted, I would have said that I wanted to come with you, and I would have meant it. Because anywhere was better than where I was. But you didn’t ask me. You didn’t consider finding a way to take me or at the least find different care arrangements for me. You faked your own death and abandoned me for good— you left me with people you _knew_ were toxic and vile because they made Thorfinn that way. And even now, even when I’m an adult and you’re back, you _still_ didn’t seek me out to see how I was, or ask me how my life was, or anything of the sort. Had Lily not seen you, would you have ever said a word to me?” 

Sophie’s eyes were welling with tears, but she was still sitting as tall as she’d been sitting before. Her pause seemed painful. 

“Probably not,” she finally answered, her voice small. 

Caden nodded once. He looked to the side. Iris hugged his arm consolingly, and Lily reached over and slipped her hand between his thighs. Elliot was now snoring comically— but genuinely— into her sternum. 

“I never wanted to sit here and be lectured on how to parent by my own child—”

Caden interrupted her. “You forget that I’ve been a parent longer than you have. I’ve been with my children since the start. No— since before the start, really. And I certainly don’t know everything, but I do know that parenting is a lifelong commitment no matter what.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t trying to scold you for it. You’re right. What I meant is…this is what I was afraid of, the reason I haven’t sought you out. Because I knew I did you wrong…I knew I’d have to answer for what I did. I felt guilty. I regret the choices I made— all of it— except for killing Thorfinn. Because protecting you…that mattered more than anything else.”

Caden nodded. “And I’m very thankful for that. Thank you. I don’t mean to make you feel worse. I didn’t come here to fight or argue. I just wanted to see if it was true…I just wanted to see you and understand.”

Maybe it was because her own son was snoring in her arms, warm and heavy with sleep, entirely vulnerable, and soft, and sweet, and—despite his faults—an irreplaceable asset to her life, but Lily felt her eyes burn. Her resentment slipped away for that moment, and in it, all she wanted was for Sophie to be the mother Caden had never had, for him to have the one thing he had always lacked. She thought he deserved the world, and if she could have, she would have given it to him. But this was out of her control. She hated things like that. 

“I wanted to see you, too. You can’t imagine how much. So much that I was terrified to,” Sophie finally admitted, and then a tear slipped past her eyelashes. Caden’s hands twitched in his lap— for a moment, Lily thought he might reach out to her to comfort her. But he folded his hands back in his lap and looked off to the side. 

“What happens now?” Sophie asked, and it didn’t slip Lily’s notice that she was asking Caden and putting the situation in his control. 

“Now I take my son home so he can stop soaking my wife’s top with drool,” Caden answered, shooting a quick, affectionate look at Lily and Elliot. Lily grimaced back. Her shirt _was_ disgustingly damp. “And if you want to arrange to see me again before we leave— or if you just want to write letters sometimes— you can reach me at either of these addresses.”

Lily didn’t know if opening this door was a good idea, but it was Caden, and he was going to open a door and risk finding something awful behind it before he potentially closed something out for good. He scrawled parts of the Den’s address on the back of his business card— enough for an owl to be able to deliver letters—and then passed it to her. 

“The front is our mailing address when we’re home. The back is our mailing address while we’re visiting.”

She took it with trembling fingers. While she studied it in silence, Lily shifted Elliot uncomfortably: his chin was digging sharply into her breastbone. 

“Are you going to tell her father about me?” Sophie dared to ask. 

“Her name is Lily.”

“Sorry,” Sophie said quickly, grimacing. She looked directly at Lily. “Lily, are you going to tell your father about me? About what I did?” 

Lily sighed. “No. But that’s not because I like you. I still think what you did to Caden was horrible. But I love him, and if he wants you to stay out of Azkaban, I’ll help keep you out of Azkaban. Besides— I don’t think the murder was that bad. It sounds like self-defense to me. The problem was treating your child like some heirloom to be inherited…you didn’t give him any sort of choice or say in anything. Our kids are part of everything.”

She rarely got to brag about her relatively non-existent maternal skills, but she certainly felt superior sitting across from a woman who’d faked her own death and left her child with cruel, neglectful blood purists. She could get used to that.

“It’s true,” Iris affirmed, “Mummy was working all the time and not listening to me when I said I missed her, but now she is, and I can sit with her when she works and help her take notes, and I helped her decide what top to wear today, and she’s my best mummy.”

It was hardly a compliment— Lily was her _only_ mummy, after all— but Lily’s heart expanded with love and joy anyway. She smiled at her daughter. Caden leaned over and kissed Iris’s hair, clearly as happy to hear that as Lily was. 

“So I won’t turn you in,” Lily promised Sophie. She narrowed her eyes a second later. “But if you hurt him ever again, I’ll make sure you get the soggiest, most depressing cell there ever was. I’m a woman of my word.”

“Yeah, okay, rein yourself in there, Mrs. Rowle,” Caden muttered to Lily. 

“Make me,” she muttered back. 

“Here? In front of my long-lost and deceased mother?” 

Lily shrugged. “I’m not fussy.”

Elliot stirred in Lily’s arms. She and Caden fell silent at once, an instinct formed from Elliot’s fussy toddler days when getting him asleep was a feat. 

“Thank you, Lily,” Sophie said. She knew she was thanking her for keeping her identity a secret, but Lily weirdly felt like she was thanking her for more than just that, too. Surely not slapping her across her face, though. 

Iris didn’t waste any time sharing her opinion. As soon as they were outside of the restaurant, she said: “You’re too nice, Daddy.”

“You think so? Why?” 

“Because you didn’t yell at her or nothing!”

“Right?!” Lily hissed to Iris. 

Caden shrugged. “I had nothing I wanted to yell about right then. I don’t know her well enough to feel that strongly either way. Maybe once I get to know her more I’ll be angrier. Maybe it’ll all process and feel real then. Maybe I’ll regret meeting with her. I don’t know. But I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t at least see her once and try to understand.”

“Maybe she’s not nice,” Iris worried. 

“Maybe she is,” Caden countered. 

“Maybe she thinks Squibs like Benji should die or that muggleborns are bad.”

Lily hadn’t even thought of that. Caden must’ve because he didn’t look too worried. 

“Maybe she does. I guess I’ll have to find out.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like chocolate or dragons or hugs or climbing shit.”

“Could be.” Caden drew Iris to his side as they continued walking. “If I ever see her again, do you want to be part of it? Or would you rather not?” 

Iris considered that. “I think I want to be part of it. Elliot does, too.”

Lily— her arms trembling from Elliot’s dead weight, the back of her neck damp with sweat from the exertion— said: “And how would you know that? He’s currently in a coma and also breaking my back. He’s got to lay off the Pineapple Lumps.”

“‘Cause he’s Elliot and I’m Iris,” Iris explained. “I just know this stuff.”

Lily allowed Caden to take a turn hauling Elliot around. She stretched her sore arms out and then smiled down at Iris as Iris took her hand. 

“What do you think, Mummy?” Iris asked. 

“About Sophie?” 

“Yes.”

Lily thought hard. “I think she’ll realize what she missed out on and feel like a dickhead.”

Elliot’s sleep-slurred voice joined in the conversation despite his little face still being smushed into Caden’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve got a mummy, Daddy.”

Caden kissed his head. “Thanks, Elliot. Do you want to see her again?” 

“Yes ‘cause she’s my grandmother,” Elliot said sleepily. 

“Told you,” Iris sang. 

“Will you all nap with me when we’re home?” Elliot asked them. 

“I will, but I want the top bunk,” Iris said. 

“I’ll rest with you a bit,” Caden told him. “But I’ve got to meet Hugo later, and Mummy has a Floo call.”

_Fuck._

“Ugh, I forgot about that,” Lily complained. The letter from the Ministry had informed her about a Floo call scheduled for that day to discuss her potential collaboration on the lime pox research. “I didn’t prepare at all. I’ll bet they want notes and other shit.”

Iris tightened her hold on Lily’s hand. “Can I help?”

Lily almost said no. She almost said _you won’t have fun— it’ll take forever— you won’t understand any of it— it’s too secret and too complicated— it’s easier if I do it alone…_ but then she stopped. 

“Help me get prepared or help with the Floo call?” She asked. 

“Both!” 

Lily considered it. “You can help me sort through my research and then you can help by taking notes during the call. How’s that? You’ll have to stay _very, very quiet,_ though.”

Iris bloomed. “Yes! Okay! I can do that. I _can_.”

In the end, she could— only because she was asleep by the time the Floo call started. The head of the Department of Mysteries’ eyebrows rose at the sight of Iris sprawled across Lily’s lap. 

“Nothing puts her to sleep like paperwork. We’re the same in that way,” she quipped. She twisted around for the papers she’d compiled with Iris’s “help”. “Okay, here’s what I’ve been working on…”

When she went to check on her boys after the call, Caden had fallen asleep too. He and Elliot were sprawled out together in the single bed, their limbs hanging off the edges of the mattress, their faces free of any worry at all. Lily walked over, perched lightly beside them, and poked Caden’s side. 

“Wake up. You’ve got a date,” she whispered. “Hugo will be heartbroken if you stand him up.”

Caden stirred. He yawned and then blinked up at her. “Are your parents back yet? Have you heard anything about Mae?”

“Nope. Not from them or Albus or Scorpius. Gale— the head of the Department of Mysteries— said they were still at the Ministry last he saw, though. Everybody’s panicked. There are loads of concerned parents flooding both the Auror department and James’s department. I thought about going to see what was going on, but I decided to spare them one more curious person.”

“And Iris was probably too busy pestering you to let you go anywhere,” Caden added. 

“She’s actually asleep on the carpet. She wants to be involved in everything so terribly, but I could tell she was fucking _bored_ sifting through all that paperwork,” Lily snorted. 

“She just wants to be with you. It’s sweet,” Caden smiled. 

“Yeah, it fucking is…a bit,” Lily agreed. “So. Your mum…”

“I don’t know, Lily,” he admitted quietly. “I guess the most surprising thing was how…mild it all felt. I mean, that’s my mother. I thought she was dead. And I couldn’t really think of anything to say to her. It felt awkward.”

“She’s a stranger, of course you felt that way. I mean, you can’t really remember her at all.” 

“Yeah, I just guess part of me hoped it’d be different. I’m still not even sure if I can trust her, let alone feel any sort of love for her. Does that sound awful?”

“No…but remember who you’re talking to,” Lily said. He elbowed her. She smiled. “Nobody said you have to love her. Nobody ever said you have to see her ever again.”

“I know. I feel like I should, though.”

“Should what?” 

“Do both of those things. Love her automatically. See her again.”

“Fuck that. You’re not obligated to feel anything for her. You’re not even obligated to trust her.”

“I don’t trust her. Especially not with the twins.”

“Me neither, and why should we? Like I said: she’s a stranger. She may share your blood— and the twins may share hers a bit, too— but that doesn’t mean anything.”

She said that…but did she really mean it? She thought about that instinctual feeling of belonging she felt with Lyra. What could that be from if it wasn’t from sharing blood? Granted, Lily had been part of Lyra’s life longer than Sophie had been part of Caden’s, and the bond was far from the bond she had with her twins, but there was affection there that seemed automatic despite. 

“I think once I trust her, everything will fall into place. And if I can’t ever trust her for some reason…that’ll tell me something, too,” he decided. 

Lily leaned over and kissed his lips. It was only the fact that their sleeping child was right there that kept her from kissing him longer. 

“I’m glad we came here, I am, but I do miss home,” Lily admitted. Their brief kiss had made her homesick for the comfort and privacy of their own bedroom, their own space, their own life. She missed her dragons (particularly Big Boy and Opal), and Mia, and her sanctuary. She couldn’t wait to be home. She had never imagined any place would ever feel more like home than the Den, but she guessed there was a lot about her life she never would’ve imagined.

He leaned his face over and kissed her hip. He set his hand on her thigh afterwards. 

“I do, too.”

She couldn’t wait to be back, but until then, she would do whatever she could to keep her family — her entire family— safe and happy. If that meant putting up with Sophie or even tracking down a kidnapper…so be it. Lily was never one to back down from a challenge.


	21. III. The Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kidnapping dilemma worsens. Lyra struggles with absence. Iris and Elliot get Lyra into some trouble. Evangeline does God's work.

“‘And then the boy said to the dog, ‘why have you come?’, and the dog, feeling brave and noble and kind, replied: ‘I have a duty to fulfill, Marty.’ Marty had never been called Marty before by a talking dog, and he decided quickly that he quite liked it, so he sat up straighter and he asked—'”

“When is Daddy coming home?” Lyra interrupted.

Lyra’s papa turned and looked down at her. He was frowning. Lyra watched as he flipped the book over and laid it face-down on his legs, saving their place.

“Soon,” he told her, and then he gave her a smile that seemed fake. Lyra’s eyes burned. She felt angry and sad all at once, and she didn’t know what to do with the way it was building up in her chest. It hurt.

“I don’t even know what that word means anymore,” she said tearfully. She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, hoping that would make her feel better, but it didn’t. Because Mae was still gone. And her daddy was still gone, too. “You keep saying ‘soon, soon, soon, soon’ but soon means ‘really quick’ and nothing has happened really quick, Papa! Nothing! And _I want my daddy!_ ”

She got a sudden urge to kick something, and she nearly did it, too. But she took a deep breath and reminded herself of her manners, and self-control, and niceness, and then she flipped over and hid her face into the mattress and yelled instead. It was okay to yell into the mattress because it made the sound less loud and so she wasn’t being a big brat.

Papa reached out and pulled her up. He set her in his lap and hugged her tightly. As he did that, Lyra realized she wasn’t really angry, she was just sad, and then she started crying.

“I-I-I w-want Daddy,” she said again. She didn’t know what to do because she was going to die if she had to be without him anymore, but she couldn’t make him appear. Papa could, though. Papa could go get him. Why wouldn’t he? “I w-want you t-to get him!”

“I know, pumpkin, I know,” Papa whispered, but Lyra thought maybe he was lying to her. How could he know? He wasn’t her and he got to see _his_ dad all the time. “But Daddy’s working and it’s so important. He’s trying to help find Mae.”

Lyra knew that. And for the first week or so that her daddy was working all day and all night, she’d been okay because she knew he was trying to find her friend. But it had been so many days, and Mae was still gone, and Daddy was gone, too, and Lyra felt so sad she could hardly speak.

“B-But I want him,” she repeated, her words shaky from her tears. She didn’t understand. She wanted her daddy. So why wasn’t he here?

“I know you do. But he won’t be back until tomorrow night. There’s nothing I can do…they’re following a lead and it’s important.”

She wasn’t really angry at Papa because she knew how much he missed Daddy, too, but that made her feel even sadder than before. And sort of frightened, too. What if she never saw her dad ever again? At that thought, she felt like she couldn’t breathe, and it was all she could do as she started crying hard into Papa’s shirt.

“I-I n-n-need him!” she wailed.

“I know,” Papa said, his voice trembling. His hand was shaky as he stroked Lyra’s hair. “I need him, too. But soon he’ll be here, I promise. C’mon, Lyra…take a deep breath…let’s finish our book and try to get some sleep.”

She locked her arms tighter around Papa. “I don’t want you to go—!”

“I won’t,” he assured her quickly. “I’ll sleep in here, I promise.”

She didn’t loosen her hold at all. She couldn’t have Papa go, too. She was frightened all the time and she wanted her papa with her.

“Read like this,” she requested tearfully.

“Okay,” he said, though it took him a long time to figure out how to hold both Lyra and the book where he could see it. After a few moments of shuffling, he resumed reading. “Marty woke with a triumphant feeling that day…”

Triumphant. If you were _triumphant,_ you felt like a winner. You were happy. Lyra hadn’t felt triumphant _once_ in ten days and thirteen hours. She was afraid she never would again.

* * *

 

“Lyra,” Papa whispered. Lyra stirred. “Guess who’s here?”

Lyra sat straight up, her heart leaping with joy. “Daddy?!” She peered around the room, her vision blurred without her glasses or potion. But it didn’t matter. She knew it wasn’t Daddy. She eyed the short, blurry figures with red-gold hair. “Oh.”

Her joy was squashed. Sleepy, disoriented, and disappointed, Lyra frowned tearfully at her cousins.

“No, but he’ll be here soon— I mean, by bedtime,” Papa said calmly. “Lulu and Cade and the twins came by for breakfast. Isn’t that great?”

 _Daddy would be greater_. She didn’t say it, though. She wasn’t mean and she had manners.

“Hi,” she told her cousins instead. Iris climbed up on her bed. Elliot was already sitting at the end of it.

“Do you want to play dragons and harpies?” Iris asked.

Lyra didn’t want to play anything. She was sad and tired. But she felt _obligated_ by how excited they were looking at her, just like Papa felt obligated to wear the clothes Gemma bought for him, just like Daddy felt obligated to work for ages to help find Mae. She didn’t like it— obligation.

“Okay,” she said with a tired sigh. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “I’ll be a harpy.”

“I’ll be a dragon!” Elliot said at once, and before Lyra could even wake up fully, he’d thrown himself on top of her and roared in her face.

She promptly burst into annoyed tears, and Elliot thought she was still playing so he roared again, and before Lyra could remind her hand to be polite, she’d smacked his eye.

“Lyra!” Papa gasped.

“I think the game is over,” Iris sighed as Elliot fell wailing onto the carpet.

* * *

 

Lyra was so angry that she didn’t want to talk to anybody. She put herself on the naughty step without being told and glared steadily at the floor as Papa fussed over Elliot’s swollen eye from the kitchen.

“Lyra,” Lulu called from the kitchen doorway. “He’s fine. You don’t need to be on the naughty step. He’s not even bleeding or anything.”

“Er— no, she hit: she needs to be on the naughty step,” Papa countered.

Lyra ground her teeth, crossed her arms, and continued glaring at the floor. Her vision was blurry not only from her missing glasses but also from her tears. She heard the sound of approaching footsteps and flinched away.

“I don’t want to talk!” she said angrily. “Go away!!”

The footsteps stopped. “You don’t even want to talk to me?” Lulu asked, surprised.

“No!”

“What about Cade?”

“No!”

“What about Papa?”

“N-No!”

She was crying again.

“Merlin fuck,” she heard Lulu hiss. “Scorpius, what’ve you done to her?!”

“Nothing!” He said back, pained. “She just misses Albus. She’s never, ever been without him for this long…ever. And with Mae being gone…” Papa trailed off sadly.

“Probably didn’t help to have her woken up by being pounced on and roared at,” Caden pointed out. Lyra lifted her head and looked towards the kitchen at that; when he peeked into the hall, she nodded once at him to show him he was right. Nobody else had got that. Cade nodded back. He stepped back into the kitchen. “Elliot, that’s not how we play nicely. Screaming in somebody’s face is not nice.”

“But smackin’ me right in my face is?! My glasses are broke!”

“They aren’t. Your mum fixed them. Now hold still so Scorpius can put this bruise cream on your eye. Damn, she really got you good, didn’t she?”

“There’s nothing good about this, Daddy!” Elliot argued. “I only wanted to play with her!”

Lyra felt bad inside. She didn’t know what it was, but she leaned forward and smushed her face into her knees, and she wanted to cry even more. A second later, she felt Papa’s hand on her shoulder.

“Lyra,” he said gently. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she mumbled. Her words were muffled into the soft fabric of her pajama bottoms.

“It is. I shouldn’t have woken you. I’m sorry. I thought…I hoped the twins would cheer you up,” he said. He sounded like he felt bad inside, too. That made Lyra even more upset. Had she hurt Papa’s feelings? She turned to face him and reached out for him. When he lifted her up into his arms, she hugged around his neck tightly and sniffled into his shoulder.

“You ought to take her to the Ministry to see Al,” Lulu suggested. “If he’s been gone even half as much as my dad has it’s no wonder she’s so upset.”

Lyra latched onto that comment at once. She twisted in Papa’s arms and spun around to face the shape that was her aunt. “I want to go! I want to see my daddy!!”

Papa sounded even more pained. “I can’t…we can’t, Lyra. Daddy’s not at the Ministry right now. He’s investigating.”

Lulu’s shoulders went up as she shrugged. “So take her to wherever he’s investigating.”

“Are you mad?! I’m not taking my little daughter to a kidnapping scene while kidnappers are still at large!!”

“Why not? You’ll keep her safe.”

“No! I can’t, Lily!”

Lyra burst into tears again. “But I want to! Papa! I want to!!”

Again, she felt the urge to scream or kick something. It wasn’t like her. But it was so hard to be nice and polite when she felt so scared and sad.

“You’ll get to see Daddy today, Lyra, I _promise_. If something happens and he can’t come home, we’ll go to him, okay?” Papa asked.

It was not okay.

“I tried, kid,” Lulu muttered as she passed by Lyra. She patted her arm briefly as she did.

“Caden, will you finish breakfast while I take her upstairs to get her eyesight potion?” Papa asked.

“Sure,” Lyra’s uncle said.

Lyra sniffled nonstop as Papa carried her back up to her bedroom. They stepped into her en suite bathroom. Papa set her on the edge of the sink and reached for the purple dropper bottle containing her eyesight potion. Before he opened it, though, he nudged Lyra’s chin up so she was looking at his eyes, and he stared seriously at her.

“Lyra, I know you’re hurting,” he told her. “I know what it feels like to miss your parent so much you don’t even know what to do with that feeling. I know you feel sad, and angry, and scared. I know. But Daddy will be back soon. You’re my pumpkin now and forever, okay? So tell me what I can do to make you feel better. Do you want me to send your cousins away?”

Lyra thought long and hard about that. “No,” she finally decided. “I can play with them I guess.”

Papa unscrewed the bottle and began preparing the dropper by squeezing the right amount of potion up into it. Lyra used to only take two lines of it, but since she was five, she took two and a half now.

“Okay. Here you go.” Lyra took the dropper from Papa. She squeezed the squishy end of the dropper so the potion fell onto her tongue. The familiar taste of marshmallows comforted her. She knew she would feel better once she could see clearly, too. She felt weird when things were blurry. “It’s going to be okay, you know. I would never lie to you.”

Lyra knew that was the truth. Papa would _never_ lie to her. She swallowed the potion, waited until she felt pain build behind her eyes, and then she squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “I want Daddy to quit his job forever.”

“Me too, Lyra. Maybe we can talk to him about it when he gets here. You and I. What do you think?”

Lyra wrapped her arms back around Papa’s neck as he lifted her up once more. She couldn’t walk with her eyes shut and she couldn’t open her eyes ’til the aftereffects of the potion wore off. She was painfully sensitive to light for the first few minutes after taking the potion.

“I think I’m going to write a speech,” Lyra declared firmly. She felt better right after she had the idea. “Like Grandfather does. All Grandfather’s speeches are long and he practices them all the time. I’m going to do that, too, and then Daddy will stay home.”

She could hear her papa’s smile when he spoke next. “A speech about why he should quit his job?”

“Yes. Can Grandfather help me?”

“I’m sure he’d love to. We can go after lunch. How’s that?”

She nodded. Feeling slightly better, she ate about half of her breakfast, sat patiently as Lulu combed and plaited her hair, and then she and the twins went into the garden to play. She could see now— thankfully— so they opted for Quidditch at first, but Lyra soon got annoyed because Elliot kept wanting to be the Keeper, but _she_ wanted to be the Keeper, and they _both_ couldn’t very well be the Keeper, could they?

“STOP STEALING MY JOB!” Lyra exploded after Elliot flew in front of her and caught the quaffle Iris had just thrown her way. “I'M THE KEEPER! I AM!”

Elliot blinked, taken aback. “You don’t have to yell…”

She felt her pulse in her face. Her neck and ears were hot. She was certain her face was as red as her dad’s got when he was angry. “I DO! ‘CAUSE YOU DON’T LISTEN! AND YOU KNOW WHAT?! YOU DON’T EVEN SAY YOUR VOWELS RIGHT! YOU PRONOUNCE ALL YOUR E’S WRONG! IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE _EH! EH! EH!”_

Elliot was looking at her dumbly. “What? No, I don’t say it wrong!”

Lyra was getting more and more annoyed. “AND YOUR O’S!! THEY ARE ‘O, O, O’! YOU SAY ‘OI, OI, OI’! IT’S ‘NO’, NOT ‘NOI’!”

Elliot drifted closer to where Iris was floating. He leaned over and hissed. “I don’t think Lyra is okay.”

Iris shook her head mutely, her eyes locked on Lyra.

Lyra felt the air move beside her as her Papa got on his broom and flew up to check on her.

“What’s wrong, Lyra?” he asked, concerned.

Her face throbbing with anger, her heart pounding, Lyra said: “HE TAKES MY JOB AND HE TALKS WRONG!”

Papa looked at her like he was disappointed. “Lyra, he just talks differently than you because he grew up somewhere else. We’ve talked about how everybody is different. This isn’t like you.”

“We’re Magic Kiwis,” Iris told her matter-of-factly.

Lyra kicked her legs out angrily. “WELL, I DON’T EVEN LIKE KIWIS! THEY’RE NASTY AND SLIMY AND BABIES POO THAT COLOR GREEN!”

Elliot was automatically affronted. He glared hotly at Lyra. “I AM NOT SLIMY! BABIES DO NOT POO ME!”

“YOU’RE DUMB ‘CAUSE I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU, I’M TALKING ABOUT KIWI!”

“YEAH?! WELL! YOU’RE _MEAN!_ ” Elliot shot back. “AND I NEVER WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU EVER AGAIN ‘CAUSE YOU HIT ME AND YOU YELL AT ME AND YOU’RE MEAN!”

Without another word, he spun around and sped towards the ground, leaving Lyra even angrier and upset than she’d been before. Iris turned and went after her twin. Lyra could hardly breathe. She was so upset that she felt like something heavy was on her chest. She gasped and wheezed against the feeling. Papa pulled her over onto his broom at once.

“I think we should go see Grandfather,” he suggested gently.

Lyra nodded.

* * *

Lyra sat down on the floor outside of Grandfather’s office while Papa knocked on the door.

“Dad?” He called.

Lyra heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor. Seconds later, the office door clicked open. Lyra scooted her bottom across the tile floor and peeked into the office. From around Grandfather’s legs, she saw a stranger sitting in front of his desk. She was terrified that Grandfather would send them away because of that.

“What’s wrong?” Grandfather asked Papa at once. He peeked around the doorframe. “Lyra, what are you doing down there?”

Lyra— still upset— hugged her legs to her chest and hid her face into her knees.

“She’s just…I don’t know what to do, Dad,” Papa whispered to Grandfather. “She seemed all right when she first found out what happened to Mae, but ever since Albus got put on the kidnapping case she’s been…inconsolable. I don’t know how to help her…”

Papa’s voice broke, and when Lyra peeked up at him, he had tears in his eyes. It made her feel even worse. She squeezed her legs closer to her chest to try and squeeze out all the bad feelings in her heart.

“She all but cried herself to sleep last night. This morning she punched Elliot in his eye, and after I thought she was calmed down, she got into another argument with him and was just being…un-Lyra-like.”

“Did Elliot _deserve_ to get punched in the eye?” Draco asked lightly.

“No. He was only playing with her.”

Lyra was certain they didn’t know she could hear them. She didn’t even bother defending herself: she wished she _hadn’t_ hit Elliot, and she wasn’t really sure why she had. She just knew she felt so bad.

She heard Grandfather’s feet as he stepped out into the hall. She peeked up at him. He was peering at her with his lips set in a tight line, but his eyes were soft. He sighed. Lyra sighed, too. He kneeled down in front of her and appraised her.

“You’re miserable, aren’t you?” he asked.

Lyra nodded as her eyes filled slowly with tears. Grandfather sighed again.

“Luckily for you, Grandfather knows all about that,” he said gently. “Come here.” Lyra reached out for him. He lifted her up and held her in his strong arms. Lyra hid her face into his neck. “Let’s talk.”

She stayed curled in Grandfather’s arms like a baby as he finished talking with the stranger in his office. As soon as they left, Grandfather set her on the edge of his desk. He and Papa peered at her.

“We can’t have another Mopey Malfoy,” Grandfather teased gently. He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “What is making you so sad?”

“I m-miss my Daddy and M-Mae and I’m scared she’s b-been c-cut up into t-t-t-t-tiny pieces,” Lyra gasped, horrified and sickened. She had heard her cousins talking about the kidnappers recently. Finnigan and Elliot had said kidnappers sometimes killed and cut up the people they kidnapped. Lyra had been haunted by that ever since, though she tried her best not to think about it. But she missed her friend and all she could think about was how scared she would feel and how much it would hurt to have some strange, bad people hurting her and how much she would miss her daddy and her papa…and what if the bad people hurt her daddy, too? What if he never came back? He was already gone almost all the time…he would work until Lyra was already in bed and then he would sing to her one time or read her only five books and she was asleep and then he was gone again and again and again…and now he had been gone for _days_ …

“What?” Papa breathed, horrified. “Lyra, that’s horrible, where did you hear that? Nobody is doing that to her!”

“You don’t know what they’re doing to her! You don’t! And they could do it to my daddy, too!”

“No, they couldn’t,” Grandfather said firmly, calmly. “Listen to me. Look at me, Lyra.”

She did.

“We think it’s the Free Magics who took Mae. They aren’t trying to kill her or hurt her. They’re just trying to make a point. I’m sure they’re keeping her somewhere safe and just waiting for someone to offer them what they want.”

It made no sense to Lyra. “Who? What do they want?”

“They want magic for everybody. Even muggles. I think they’re holding our magical children hostage.”

“But…but…” Lyra was confused. She had too many thoughts in her head. “I want Daddy to get Mae and I want him to come home.”

“I know. And it’s okay that you feel that way. But you need to talk to Papa when you feel like that, not lash out at your cousin.”

“I _can’t help it!” s_ he exploded, frustrated. “I can’t, Grandfather!”

“You can,” he countered, still just as calm as he’d been at the start. Lyra certainly didn’t feel calm, but she wanted to be calm like him, so she took a deep breath and tried to relax. “Why don’t we go do something fun while we wait for Albus to get back home?”

Lyra was skeptical, but she was warming up bit-by-bit. “Like what?”

“Why don’t we go to Gemma’s shop?” Grandfather suggested. “You can help Gemma press flowers and herbs. You love doing that.”

She _did_ love doing that. And she loved sorting all the herbal ingredients into the little wooden drawers in the walls. She took a deep breath and nodded.

“Okay,” she said. She looked up at Grandfather. “Can we get ice cream afterwards?”

He laughed. He leaned in and kissed her hair. “Yes. We’ll get earl grey and lavender like we always do.”

She felt a bit better at that.

* * *

 

“Here you go,” Gemma told her cheerfully. She set another huge bag of individually packaged herbs at Lyra’s side. She’d just sorted through the first. “You’re doing a lovely job! I should hire you on, I think.”

Lyra beamed. “Really, Gemma?! Can you?!” She lifted a sachet of basil and inhaled it deeply. “I want to work here forever!”

Gemma patted her hair. “I’ll chat with Hermione about our child labor laws and let you know.”

“Okay!”

She sorted everything from Angelica root to vanilla. She was feeling a lot calmer afterwards as she and Papa and Grandfather sat down for lunch. Gemma had even given her a bracelet made with tiny clay beads soaked in lavender oil; Lyra kept lifting her wrist up and sniffling it happily as they waited for their food. She felt happy enough to eat all her meal, and then, when she and Papa returned home, she was greeted by someone unexpected. Lyra inhaled rapidly in shock.

“ _Iset_!” she cried. She walked over and wrapped her arms around her gently. She was smiling as she peered up at her. “Can we play our game?! Is Rosie here?!”

Iset smiled back at her. “She’s still working I’m afraid.”

“Like Daddy,” Lyra said at once.

“Right, Rose said they’re keeping him and Harry very busy,” Iset said.

“I hate it,” Lyra admitted. She started to feel upset again.

“Me too,” Iset said. It was the truth; Lyra could tell because the words sounded heavy. Iset kneeled so she was eye-to-eye with Lyra. “But I know what will make you feel better.”

Lyra was certain _nothing on the entire planet_ could make her feel better. And then Iset reached into a carrier sitting on the floor beside her and lifted up a tiny grey kitten. Lyra’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head.

“A KITTEN!” she cried. “Can I hold it?!”

“Of course. It’s for you, Lyra,” she explained.

Lyra looked at her and the kitten in wonder. She reached out hesitantly and touched the kitten’s soft fur with the tip of her finger. “For _me_?” she breathed.

“Lyra, Daddy and I knew how upset you were about not getting to have a dragon egg,” Papa said softly. He kneeled beside her, too. “We asked Iset to find the perfect kitten for you. This is a wonderful choice, Iset.”

“I thought so, too,” Iset smiled.

Lyra might have previously said that kittens weren’t as good as dragons, but as Iset set the tiny, fluffy kitten into her arms, she was certain that that would’ve been a lie. She cuddled the kitten very carefully, making sure to be as gentle as she always was when she held Uncle Jamie’s babies, and then she kissed its head. It mewed softly and butted its head against her shoulder. Lyra felt teary with wonder and love. She looked up at Papa and Iset.

“I _love it_!”

Iset and Papa exchanged a quick smile. For a moment, Lyra wondered if maybe Papa had contacted Iset and told her how sad Lyra was, but she didn’t care either way. She cradled her kitten in her arms and smiled at it.

“I love you,” she said happily to the kitten. She looked up at Iset. “Is it a boy cat or a girl cat?”

“A girl.”

“What is her name?!”

“Whatever you want it to be,” Iset said.

Lyra inhaled in excitement. “Star!”

Iset laughed. “Star looks very happy with you, Lyra. I’m going to set the food and bed I brought for her in the sitting room.”

Lyra hurried over and sank her hand into Iset’s. “I want to go with you!”

Iset squeezed her hand gently. “Okay!”

Lyra and Iset walked around the sitting room looking for the best place to put Star’s bed and food and water dishes. Lyra decided that underneath the window was a prime spot— so Star could see the outside world and watch the birds— and then she and Iset sat with Star and watched her play with her new toys. Lyra was so happy that when the twins returned, she was even glad to see Elliot.

“Iris! Elliot!! Look!! Look!” Lyra cried. She held Star up so they could see her. The twins beamed and ran over to her. They fell down beside her and reached for Star at once; Lyra passed her to Elliot and grinned as he kissed Star’s head and Iris scratched behind her ears.

“Her name is Star and she loves this blue ball!” Lyra exclaimed. She held up the ball Star had been playing with. It had a bell inside that chimed every time it moved.

“She’s so soft!” Elliot said happily. “I wish our dragons were soft…”

“No, scales are bad ass,” Iris said. She pet Star’s back. “But I love this kitty.”

The twins and Lyra stretched out on their tummies and spent the next hour playing with Star. Elliot didn’t mention their fight that morning, and neither did Lyra. She felt even worse about it now as she giggled and played with the twins; she knew nothing she was upset about was Elliot’s fault. She didn’t know why she took things out on him, he just made her so angry sometimes (especially when she was already upset).

“Oi! A kitten! You didn’t tell me you got Lyra a kitten, Scorpius!” Lulu exclaimed. Lyra turned and beamed at her as she walked in the kitchen, a mug of coffee in hand. She hurried over and plopped down beside the twins. Iris and Elliot complained as Lulu pulled Star out from between them and cradled her, but Lyra smiled.

“That’s my cat, Lulu! Do you like her?!”

“She’s fucking lovely!” Lulu said. “You’d better hide her from Ginny, though. She steals cats, you know. It’s a bit of a hobby.”

Lyra giggled at once. “Ginny doesn’t steal cats, Lulu, you’re silly!”

“She does so! Just ask Harry!”

“No…she _rescues_ cats,” Lyra corrected.

Lulu snorted. “She’s got you trained well, I see.” Lulu reached over and poked Lyra’s side. She fell into giggles at once. “Are you her cat-napping accomplice?”

“No!!” Lyra laughed. “I don’t steal cats!”

“Oh, okay! Whew! For a moment there I thought you were a pet-napper!” Lulu exclaimed, her hand pressed over her heart.

“It takes loads of work to kidnap animals,” Iris told them wisely. “Do you know how hard it was to get that dragon egg, Mummy?! Lyra doesn’t have that sort of time.”

“She goes to weird kid-training school all day,” Elliot added.

Lulu snorted. Lyra smiled at Lulu’s next smile, and when Lulu wrapped her arms around the twins, Lyra scooted over and joined their embrace by climbing into Lulu’s lap. The twins closed in and hugged her tight; Lyra giggled.

“See? Everything turns out just fine, Lyra,” Lulu said, and Lyra knew she was talking about Mae and Daddy. “You felt so upset this morning, and now look, the sun has set and we’re laughing.”

It was true. She could hardly remember the heavy, sad feeling that had lived in her chest all morning long. She was so thankful for that.

* * *

 

She waited, and waited, and waited, and then— Daddy was back. Lyra shrieked happily when he walked into the kitchen. Harry was with him, but Lyra couldn’t see anybody but her dad. She ran full-force at him and threw her arms around his waist. She was so happy she couldn’t stop beaming; her face hurt from the force of it.

“Pumpkin,” Daddy said quietly, a happy sigh. Lyra could tell how relieved he was to be home by the way he hugged her tight. She hugged him just the same.

“I missed you, I missed you, Daddy,” Lyra said tearfully. He lifted her up and she hugged him even tighter.

“Oh, I missed _you_ , Lyra,” he said.

Papa leaned in and kissed Daddy above Lyra’s head. He wrapped his arms around the both of them afterwards. Lyra’s chest felt like it might explode again, but this time from happiness. She never wanted them to ever be apart ever again.

“Daddy, I missed you, Iset gave me a kitten, I helped Gemma with her herbs, Grandfather bought me ice cream, Papa and I read _fifty books_ since you’ve been away, the twins are here, look, see?!” She pointed over at the table where the twins, Lulu, and Cade were drinking coffee. Lyra leaned back and looked up at her dad. “I missed you. What did you do, Daddy?!”

It was then that she noticed his expression. Exhausted, devastated. Her smile slipped away at once. She twisted and looked behind her: Papa had noticed, too.

“What?” he asked quietly. He sounded afraid.

Daddy hugged Lyra tighter. Her heart was pounding now. She was very afraid.

“What is it, Albus?” Lulu asked. “Did you…did you find Mae?”

“No. I didn’t,” Albus said, his voice thick.

Lulu looked at Harry after that. He was quiet and worried.

“Dad?” Lulu asked. She sounded afraid. Lyra had never heard Lulu sound afraid before. It terrified her even more.

“Dahlia,” Harry said, his voice almost a whisper. Lyra felt her heart drop down to her toes.

“What?!” Elliot and Iris chorused.

“What do you mean? Dad, what?” Lulu demanded.

Cade sounded grave. “Is she okay?”

“We don’t know,” Harry said helplessly. “She’s gone.”

“She— she can’t be! She— Dad, I don’t understand, she’s— that’s Aster’s girl, that’s— the Minister’s granddaughter! Dad, when? How?! I have to go see them, where are Aster and Hugo?!”

“The Ministry.”

Harry’s voice sounded dead, but Lulu’s voice was shaking.

“I’ve got to go!” Lulu said.

Lyra promptly burst into terrified tears. Elliot joined her soon after.

“I’m going! I’m going, too!” Iris exclaimed while Elliot sobbed. “That’s my friend!”

Daddy gave a long, shaky sigh, and somehow, without him having to say a word, Lyra understood. She tightened her arms around his neck.

“No, Daddy, no,” she cried, “don’t go again! You just got back! You just got back!”

“I know, pumpkin, I’m so sorry,” he said, pained. She heard tears in _his_ voice. That _really_ freaked her out. “I have to go. This is my family. This is my job. Harry and I came to see you and tell everybody what happened, but we have to go back now—”

“I’m coming, too,” Lulu said at once.

“NO!” Lyra and Iris chorused— Lyra because Daddy was leaving, Iris because her mummy was. Elliot was crying too hard to speak. When Lyra peeked over at him, she saw he was clinging tearfully to Cade as he wept.

“I’m going with you!” Iris said fiercely.

“Me too! Me too!” Lyra leaned back and reached up to grasp Daddy’s face. She held it in her hands. “Daddy, take me too!”

“Absolutely not,” Daddy told her sternly. He leaned in and he kissed her forehead. “I love you— and that’s why you can’t.”

Lyra cried, and cried, and cried. She didn’t have any control over anything, so she enacted control over the only thing she could control: herself. She tightened her grip on Daddy and refused to let go for anything. He and Harry choked down a quick dinner with Lyra still holding onto Daddy. He tried to console her by telling her he’d be back in the morning. He and Papa tried to convince her to let go by telling her she could wait up all night for Daddy if she wanted to. But she couldn’t do it. In the end, Papa tried to pull her from Daddy but couldn’t manage it. Lulu was stone-faced as she wrenched Lyra out of Daddy’s arms. He was crying as he stepped from the house.

“No! No!” Lyra protested.

“You’re hysterical, Lyra, take a deep breath,” Lulu ordered.

“No! I don’t want you! I want Daddy! Put me down! _Daddy_!” Lyra yelled after him.

Suddenly, Lulu’s hold was firmer than before, and her aunt was staring sternly into her face.

“Lyra Astoria, you look at me and you listen,” she snapped. Her tone startled Lyra enough to stop struggling in her arms. She stared wide-eyed at Lulu. She couldn’t remember an adult ever talking to her like that. “Dahlia has been taken. She has been kidnapped by someone who very well might be hurting her _right now._ You are being selfish. You’re being a baby! Get a grip on yourself _right now!_ Albus is an Auror! This is his _job_! It’s never been more important than it is right now! You’re going to be okay if you have to miss Daddy for one more night! He’s going to come back to you! But right now, he’s got to make sure that Dahlia gets to come home to her parents! So get a grip and take a deep fucking breath and pull yourself together, for fuck’s sake!” 

Her speech had made Elliot calm down, but it only upset Lyra worse. She stared wounded into Lulu’s eyes and utterly broke down. Papa pulled her into his arms a moment later and cooed to her, but Lyra was beyond that.

“Lily!” Papa said, wounded and hurt on Lyra’s behalf.

Lulu snatched her cloak off the hook by the door. “I’m going to the Ministry.”

“WE’RE—”

Lulu interrupted Iris. “No. You two are staying here with Daddy.”

“What?!” Iris demanded. She sounded hurt and cross. “But we’re a team, Mummy, and Dahlia is my friend!”

“You’re staying with Daddy,” Lulu repeated. Lyra heard the sound of a kiss. “I’ll let you know once I know something.”

“Okay,” Cade said. “Be careful. _Please_ tell Hugo I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

If Lyra was upset by her parent leaving, Iris was _enraged_ by hers going _._ She fled the room as soon as Lulu left, slamming doors behind her and swearing as she went, and neither Papa nor Cade followed her. Elliot sulked off after his twin after a few more hugs from his dad. Lyra didn’t know what she wanted. She was inconsolable. Nothing in her world was right anymore, and now Daddy was gone again, and her cousin…

Cade sighed. “I’ll go round the twins up…”

“Why don’t you just stay here?” Papa offered. “I’m sure Ginny will be here soon after she finds out, which is surely any moment. We can all stay here for the night instead of you and the twins being alone at the Den.”

Lyra wondered if Papa was a bit afraid to be all alone in their house without Daddy. Or maybe he was scared for Cade to be all alone without Lulu.

“Yeah, okay,” Cade agreed. “I don’t know how well I’ll be able to restrain the twins to get them in the Floo, anyway…”

“Best not even try,” Papa said with a weak laugh. “You might get bitten.” Papa looked down at Lyra. “What do you want to do, Lyra? Do you want to sleep or wait up for Daddy?”

She was just so tired and sad. “I dunno, Papa.”

He kissed her hair. “Why don’t we read books until you decide?”

Lyra nodded. “Okay.”

He read to her for what felt like ages, but she couldn’t do much but stare unseeingly at the wall, her mind reeling with loads of worries and fears. Papa actually slipped off to sleep before she did. Lyra moved the book off his stomach, set it on the bedside table, pulled the blankets up over her Papa, and then pat his hair nicely. She leaned in and kissed his forehead.

“Goodnight, Papa,” she whispered.

She crept quietly from the bed, tiptoed downstairs, and searched all over the living room for Star. She couldn’t find her, and that was upsetting her again, but then she heard Elliot’s voice.

“I’ve got her,” he said.

Lyra turned to the stairs. The twins were coming down, Elliot first, Star snoozing in his arms. Lyra was relieved. She hurried over and took her kitten from him. She got one good cuddle in before Star woke and leapt from her arms.

“Where’s Cade?” Lyra wondered, peeking behind Iris. No uncle.

“Sleeping. We snuggled with him and pretended we were asleep and that always makes him fall asleep,” Iris explained. “Where’s Scorpius?”

“Asleep,” Lyra said. “He fell asleep reading.”

The twins looked oddly happy about that. Lyra didn’t understand it until Iris said: “Let’s go!”

Her heart skipped a beat in fear. “What?”

“We’re going to the Ministry,” Iris told her firmly.

“I know how to get there ‘cause I watched Mummy Floo there loads of times,” Elliot said bravely.

Lyra turned and looked at the dark windows. The outside was scary and huge without her dads. She shook her head.

“We can’t. It’s dangerous. They won’t know where we’ve gone.”

“They should have taken us!” Iris argued hotly. “My mummy promised! And then she left me anyway! And your daddy just got back and then he left again!”

“And Dahlia is snatched and she needs our help,” Elliot added earnestly.

Lyra’s heart ached at Iris’s reminder of her Daddy’s recent abandoning, but she didn’t feel close to upset enough to run away from home. And that’s what that was if you left home without your parents. It was running away and that’s how people got hurt.

“It’s dangerous!” Lyra said again.

“The whole entire world is dangerous!” Iris countered. “What if there are bad guys there at the Ministry and Mummy and Albus are in danger?”

“No, they can’t be because Harry is there,” Lyra refuted at once (but she was starting to feel uneasy).

Iris squared her shoulders. Elliot was already pulling a coat on over his pajamas.

“We’re going,” Iris said firmly. “You can stay or you can come.”

Lyra’s heart was pounding hard now. “You might get kidnapped, too!!”

“We won’t,” scoffed Iris.

“Mummy says they’d bring us right back,” Elliot affirmed. Lyra watched on as Iris pulled her coat on, too, and then the two really went towards the Floo in the living room. Elliot grabbed the vase with the Floo powder in it. Lyra didn’t know what to do. She was considering screaming at the top of her lungs so Papa or Cade would come downstairs and catch them, but before she could, she spotted something small and grey darting in after the twins. Her heart beat strangely in her panic.

“Wait!” she exclaimed. She sprinted over and ducked into the fireplace after Star. “Star ran behind your legs, Iris—”

“The—” Elliot’s words broke off with a sudden sneeze as Star kicked up loads of ash and soot into the air. The word _ministry_ came out in a weird mush. And before Lyra could say a word, he’d thrown his handful of Floo powder down, and she was being squeezed and yanked through the Floo systems, her arms barely around her struggling kitten. Just when she was certain it would never be over, that she’d suffocate here in this Floo with her cousins, the three of them came tumbling out of the Floo, landing facedown on an ashy hearth rug that smelt of smoke. Groaning, Lyra lifted her head and struggled to recover from her fall: the breath had been knocked from her. At her side, she heard one of the twins stand.

“Oh _no_ ,” Elliot exclaimed a moment later. “My glasses broke!”

“Uh oh,” Iris said, and Lyra just _knew_ it wasn’t about Elliot’s glasses. Sure enough, when she sat and looked around, she realized what the problem was. Her stomach twisted.

“This is not the Ministry!” she exclaimed, panicked. She felt she was in some sort of nightmare. They’d Floo’d right into a dark, dingy home that smelled bad. A stranger’s home. Lyra felt liable to vomit. To make matters worse, Star was struggling in her arms again, wanting to be let down, but Lyra couldn’t let her loose in a stranger’s home— she’d never find her again. She couldn’t lose her.

“This is _bad_! Very, very _naughty_!” Lyra snapped. “We broke into this house! We are lost! Our daddies and your mummy are going to be so angry— _so angry_!”

“They might think we were kidnapped, too, if we don’t hurry back to them,” Elliot said.

Lyra hadn’t even thought of that yet. She looked at Elliot, horrified. “Oh no!!”

She stood up, Star still wriggling in her arms, and set about looking for the Floo powder. She looked above the fireplace where Harry and Ginny kept it, but nothing was up there except what looked like animal bones. She looked around the fireplace, but there were no tables holding Floo powder. She was feeling even more sick now.

“Stop it, Star!” she hissed tearfully. “I don’t see any Floo powder!”

“Here,” Iris said, and Lyra spun around hopefully, but it wasn’t the Floo powder she had. She was holding a box. She hurriedly dumped its contents out on the floor— dozens of letters— and then grabbed Star from Lyra. She quickly set her in the box and closed it. “We can take turns carrying her so she doesn’t run away.”

“You gotta give her breathing holes,” Elliot reminded his sister, his eyes squinted nearly to the point of being shut as he struggled to see around himself. Lyra sympathized with him; she knew how difficult it was to see without glasses or potion.

“I’m gonna! I’m looking for something…ah-ha!” Iris grabbed a letter opener and began carefully carving holes in the top of the box.

“This is _bad_!” Lyra persisted. “We ran away!! We’re in a stranger’s house, and look!” She pointed at the bones atop the mantle. “They are probably murderers!”

“Or they could be taxidermists,” Elliot said fairly.

“Shut up!” Lyra snapped at him. “We’re in trouble, we’re in trouble, we’re in trouble…!”

“Hush!” Iris scolded her. “If somebody’s here, they’ll hear you!”

Lyra hadn’t thought of that. She squeezed her lips shut at once.

“I don’t see any Floo powder anywhere,” Iris whispered. She was looking around, too. Elliot appeared to be trying to, but without his glasses, he was about as blind as Lyra was without hers. He was seriously examining a glass of water like he thought it might contain Floo powder. He stuck his fist confidently inside of it, only to shriek and withdraw it at once.

“ _Wet_!”

“Shh!”

“Maybe they’re out of Floo powder,” Iris decided. “We need to go to a different house.”

“We already broke into one and you want to break into another?!”

“Well we gotta get home, don’t we?” Iris challenged. “I dunno how far we are from the Ministry but maybe we’re close and we can walk…I’m going outside.”

The only thing worse than the stranger’s scary home was the dark unknown outside. Lyra walked over and grabbed onto Elliot’s arm. He looked in her direction, and the way he furrowed his brows made Lyra think he was worried about her.

“You scared?” He wondered.

“No,” Lyra said defensively. Her voice was wobbling. “I’m only making sure you don’t run into walls.”

“Sure, okay,” he said, but Lyra knew he didn’t believe her. She watched Iris head towards the front door. A second later, the candles in the living room flickered on and off, and Lyra realized she was doing it by accident. She took long, deep breaths like Papa had shown her and tried to calm down, but the flickering only got worse. A moment later, the radio in the corner suddenly switched on and began blaring a Butterbeers in Boston song, and then they heard a thump from the back of the house.

“IS THAT YOU, SIMON?” A man yelled. He sounded angry. _Nope!_ Lyra thought. _Time to go!_

 _“Nope, nope, nope!”_ Lyra muttered urgently under her breath. She tightened her hold on Elliot and yanked on his arm, dragging him towards the door, Iris leading the way with Star’s box clutched underneath her arm. At first when Iris tried the door, it was locked, but they both stared hard at it in mute panic until they heard a _click_! As soon as they did, Iris threw it open, and they hurled themselves into the night.

“Keep going, keep going!” Lyra ordered the twins. They’d stopped only a few feet from the door. “What if he comes out to check?! Walk, walk, walk!”

The twins matched her furious pace. She hardly felt the sting of the cold air against her nose and cheeks. She realized she was barefoot only when she felt the cold ground underneath her, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Her shoes were very far away. 

“This is far enough,” Iris declared, out of breath, stopping them all a good ways away. They were in some part of muggle London Lyra had never seen before, a part she was certain Papa would call _unsafe._ It seemed dirty and there were far too many people walking about so late at night. Nothing good happened after nine, that was what Papa always said.

“We can’t let them see us,” Lyra hissed at the twins.

“Why not?” Elliot demanded.

“‘Cause we’re little children! And we’re alone! That’s not normal!”

Elliot and Iris exchanged a baffled look. Lyra didn’t have time for their foolishness.

“In the _real world_ , kids as little as us can’t run off at night without parents! So get over here and hide!” She ordered, pointing at a narrow alleyway a few steps away from them. It seemed familiar for a moment as she stared at it, and she didn’t know why, but she was certain that was where they needed to go. “Come on, come on!!”

“Fine, Merlin fuck!” Iris cried. “You’re so _bossy_!”

Elliot, however, wasn’t fine with any of it. He stopped dead in front of the alleyway entrance.

“Yeah no. Nope.”

He reversed. Lyra and Iris both reached out and grabbed onto his arms and yanked him back over.

“Yes! Look, that weird looking man saw us, see?!” Lyra said, nodding over towards an older man leering at them with a look Papa would have called _suspect._

Elliot shook his head. “That is where little kids go to die. _Nah._ Not _even._ ”

Lyra looked over at Iris. She was already looking at Lyra. They locked eyes and Lyra understood. They took a deep breath, steeled themselves, and then tightened their holds on Elliot’s arms. They yanked and dragged him into the alley with him resisting the entire time and swearing at them under his breath, but Lyra didn’t care because she didn’t want the muggle police called on them. Those muggle police were not nice.

“It’s bloody dark in here,” Iris muttered. And she was right. As they stepped in, it was much darker than Lyra had thought it would be— nearly pitch dark. But that didn’t make sense. The moon was full and bright— Lyra remembered passively noting how much it lit up the street as they ran— and there were muggle streetlamps. Where had all that light gone?

“I think this is magic,” Lyra realized. She wondered if that’s why she’d been drawn to it in the first place. She was hardly speaking at all her voice was so quiet; as she and the twins took tentative steps into the alley, it got darker and darker, and then it wasn’t dark at all. A scene panned out in front of Lyra: a tall-ceilinged, modest-looking gathering hall, like a sadder version of a Ministry room, with probably around thirty people crowded around a massive table. As they took in the scene, Elliot whispered ‘ _what the fuck?’,_ and they watched in horror as somebody at the table twisted to look their way. Lyra, Iris, and Elliot threw themselves behind a nearby column at once.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Iris mouthed silently.

“Who the sodding fucking fuck-hell…!” Elliot breathed.

Lyra slapped a hand over his mouth at once and glowered. She put a finger over her lips, leveled a stern look his way, and then carefully peeked around the edge of the wide column. The man had turned back around. Somebody was speaking now and they had the voice of a leader, like Harry’s voice, like Hermione’s voice, and Lyra automatically listened.

“ _Please_ ,” the leader-man said, but he wasn’t pleading, he was being sarcastic. “Spare us the details on how a _four-year-old_ bested your pathetic arse, Kennedy.”

“But you don’t understand,” another man— Kennedy, Lyra guessed, using her context clues like Papa taught her when they read stories— pleaded. “She made her skin catch fire with magic! I had to let go of her!”

“For somebody so desperate to reinstate magical ability into your child, you seem to have forgotten what it actually means to have a magical child. Of course that happened. Powerful little ones have magical outbursts all the time, especially when they’re frightened or upset. You should have anticipated that!”

“But—!”

“I don’t want to hear anymore,” the leader said, and he sounded so angry that Lyra felt worried for Kennedy. “You had the Minister for Magic’s granddaughter. We could’ve done whatever we wanted with that sort of leverage. She would have given us the cure for Lime Pox in a moment— we would’ve had a way to give magical ability to our non-magical children and even other muggles if we wanted— but you ruined it all because you can’t stand a bit of heat!”

“She _literally caught herself on fire!_ I had second-degree burns!”

“That’s _enough_!” The leader boomed, and at once, everything fell silent. Lyra knew he’d conjured silence because Hermione had done that once during a family argument at Christmas Eve. “The Minister’s granddaughter is gone. I’m sure she’s found her way home by now. We have lost our greatest leverage and asset. Now what?”

He had definitely lifted the forced silence— Lyra knew because Elliot was back to whispering very naughty words under his breath— but nobody was saying anything despite that.

“ _Dahlia got ‘em_ ,” Iris hissed to Elliot and Lyra. Lyra looked at her. The three of them beamed.

“I’ve got an idea,” a woman said suddenly. The group of people— probably those Free Magics— listened intently.

“Let’s go now while they’re talking,” Lyra ordered. She picked up the box Iris had set down momentarily. Star’s nails were scratching along the inside, but when Lyra peeked into the box, Star seemed to be okay. “Let’s go!”

“No way!” The twins chorused.

“We need to hear what their plan is so we can tell Harry and Mummy and Albus and Hermione,” Iris argued.

“No!! We need to go home ‘cause we’re five-years-old!” Lyra hissed back. “You’re not an Auror! You’re not! Because you have to get all sorts of O.W.Ls and N.E.W.T.s and I bet you’ve never even got one before!”

“You can keep your owls and your newts. We’ve got dragons. We don’t need those,” Elliot sneered. “Now shh! Be quiet!”

“—pertaining to what, exactly?”

“The purebloods. The blood supremacists. We receive threats daily. If we could pin the kidnapping on them it’d get them out of the way and keep suspicion off us while we make our next move,” the woman was saying.

“The Minister’s granddaughter might have realized who we are,” a man said uneasily.

“How? She’s hardly only enough to speak!”

“She’s plenty old enough to speak. And the child could read.”

“Could not!”

“Yes, she could! She was reading off street signs as we drove past! It was as if she was threatening me, letting me know that she knew where we were going, that she’d remember…” the woman sounded haunted. Lyra smiled, proud of her little cousin. She helped her with her sounds all the time.

“Well, we’ll have to wait and see how much she noticed and what she told her grandmother. What we need to focus on now is what our next move is,” the leader said. “We want them to understand our pain. If we take their magical children, they’ll know what we feel every day having had our magical futures taken from us. We can use this to get them to release the cure for lime pox…we know they’ve found a way to fix it, to give magical ability back to our children, but they won’t give it to us—”

“Because they want the government to be completely controlled by Potters and Weasleys! Have you seen how quickly they reproduce?! And soon they’ll be the only bloodlines still producing magical children!”

“No, they want to keep the blood supremacists in their pockets— that’s why they haven’t given us the cure! Surely you’ve noticed the pattern? Malfoy, Rowle, Goyle—”

Lyra felt a thrill of terror at hearing _Malfoy_ mentioned. People were always talking about Potters, but she noticed they didn’t talk about Malfoys much. At least not where she could hear what was being said.

“No matter the reason,” the leader interrupted firmly, “we have to show them the reality that we’re living in. And what better way than having them live it, too?”

“I stand by what I said,” a woman with a mousy voice said. “We take one of Potter’s.”

“Which Potter?”

“Which Potter? Which sodding Potter? Which Potter do you think I mean you bloody—”

“His grandchildren?”

“Merlin knows he’s got plenty…”

“No. That’s not the most effective move.”

“Why not?! You think Harry Potter will stand by idly if we take one of his family members?”

“No, I think he’ll demolish us.”

“ _He would_ ,” Iris hissed smugly. “He’d demolish your entire arse!”

“He would have demolished us for taking his best friends’ granddaughter, so if you really felt that way, you wouldn’t have voted _yes_ for kidnapping the Boot-Weasley child.”

“You’ll doom us all if you touch his grandchildren,” a different voice said. “I voted no on taking the Minister’s granddaughter for that same reason. Not to mention the other affiliations with the family…I don’t have any interest in upsetting Draco Malfoy and his WWEU cult.”

“Nobody was talking about taking the Malfoy child. We’re not idiots.”

Lyra exchanged wide-eyed looks with the twins. She felt a bit sick.

“Yes, that would be a poor move,” somebody else agreed. “It’d make all the ex-blood purists at Draco Malfoy’s little organization and the Potters join forces.”

There was a long pause. Lyra edged a bit towards the alley, but Iris grabbed her hand and cursed at her.

“What about the woman in the Department of Mysteries?”

“Which woman?”

“The geneticist. She’s mates with the eldest Potter. She’s got two daughters.”

There was a long, confused pause.

“Wood’s granddaughters? Oliver Wood— the Quidditch player?”

“Yeah, the broomstick bloke is his son. He’s married to the Department of Mysteries broad. They’ve got two kids.”

Lyra frowned. The twins didn’t look too disturbed— they hardly ever interacted with Ben and Evvie and their girls— but Lyra was friends with them. Hazel was in Dahlia's year at their school (only one year below Lyra). Violet was Alice’s age.

“Hm,” the leader-man considered. “She _would_ have more power over the cure than most. That’s where it would have been developed.”

“And there’s a good enough connection to the Potters and Weasleys through the eldest Potter child to make them care, but we wouldn’t be shooting ourselves in the foot like we’d be doing if we took the Potter kids’ kids.”

“Hmm…”

“Let’s go now,” Lyra whispered desperately to the twins. “Come on, please, let’s go!”

“Not yet!” Iris said.

Lyra made to edge away thinking they would follow her despite their reservations, but Elliot reached out and grabbed onto her again before she could make it very far. She pushed back against him by instinct; he stumbled from the force of it and fell back against the column, and then she heard him inhale sharply in pain, and he held his hand up in mute shock. Lyra’s eyes were drawn at once to the puncture in his palm and the blood flowing out. She panicked.

“Oh no! No!” she breathed. “Was there a nail?!”

“Shh!” Iris scolded. She grabbed her twin’s hand and squinted at it. “How’d you do that?!”

Elliot turned to examine the column he’d fallen against. He looked baffled more than pained.

“I dunno I caught myself with my hands and there’s something sharp…ouch…”

Lyra knew they had little time for action. She set the box with Star in it down at her feet. Her hands scrambled at her throat, but she wasn’t wearing one of the tiny vial necklaces she sometimes carried around for Daddy. What did she do?! All she could think about was her daddy bleeding everywhere the last time he’d gotten a scratch. It had been so scary. What had Papa done— what had he told her to do if that ever happened when he wasn’t there to help? _Use the powder, and if you don’t have that, use a tourniquet,_ he’d said, and then he’d taught her how…

She pulled the tie from her dressing gown.

“Er, whatcha doing?” Elliot asked, alarmed, as Lyra grabbed his injured hand.

“You’re bleeding,” Lyra whispered back. She put the tourniquet high up above his wound like she’d been taught and began tightening it mercilessly. Elliot cried out in pain.

“OW, OW, OW, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” He shouted.

_Uh oh._

Lyra heard chairs scraping against the floor.

“What was that?” An adult asked.

“Did you hear that?” another hissed.

“Okay,” Iris said, “run!!!”

Lyra didn’t have to be told twice. She snatched Star’s box up, clutched it tightly to her chest, and she and Elliot took off in a sprint in the direction Iris had gone. They needed to turn around and go back to the entryway, but Iris had taken them down a smaller corridor, and it was too late to turn back now. Lyra made a mental note to punch her later.

“KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING, GO, GO!” Iris encouraged them.

Lyra was running as hard as she could. She had never been more scared. And she was certain her cousin was going to bleed out and die right in front of her because she never got the chance to deal with his wound. But on and on they ran, until—

Lyra stopped dead in place.

“Lyra!” Iris cried, tortured. “Move your fucking arse! Move it! Now! _Go, you bloody idiot!”_

Lyra wanted to follow, but she was entranced. She stood in place and turned to face the open doorway she’d spotted from the corner of her eye. Inside, it was like a glass rainbow. There were rows and rows of shelves carrying beautiful colored glass bottles in a variety of shapes and sizes. Lyra had never in her life felt so entranced by something. She took a step forward.

“YOU CAN GO PERFUME SHOPPING LATER!” Elliot exploded, frustrated and panicked. “I DON’T WANT TO BE KILLED AND TURNED INTO A LAMP!! I GOT SHIT TO DO THAT I CAN’T DO AS A LAMP!”

Lyra knew at the back of her mind that her cousins were right, but she was walking forward into the room anyway. She stared in wonder at the light shining feebly off the bottles. She examined the row closest to the door: some bottles were empty, but some had swirling gasses inside of them, and others had sparkles that reminded Lyra of constellations…

“IF YOU’RE GONNA STEAL, STEAL, JUST C’MON!”

Lyra blinked. She was going to do that, wasn’t she? She never imagined she’d steal anything— her! Lyra Potter-Malfoy!— but she was going to take these bottles with her. But the only problem was…they didn’t have lids. Her eyes darted from shelf to shelf. The ones she really wanted— with the galaxies inside— were open and Lyra was afraid they held something dangerous inside that would spill out as she ran. And then she spotted a section of smaller bottles made of a light green glass that had corks…

“I think somebody’s coming! I’m going to leave you!” Iris warned Lyra.

Lyra shifted the box with her kitten in it over so it was clutched mainly with one arm, reached out, and snatched the first corked bottle she saw. She shoved it into her dressing gown pocket.

“Okay, let’s go!” She exclaimed. She set off towards the door again, but Iris grabbed her arm, yanking her to a painful stop.

“Wait, c’mere,” Iris ordered, and Lyra and Elliot followed her as she ducked behind a row of shelves on the other side of the open doorway. The shelf was so laden with bottles that nobody could hope to see what was behind it. In this case, there were three Potter grandchildren behind it. Lyra understood: they were going to crouch here quietly, wait until the people following them went past them, then run back and escape. She pressed both her hands over her mouth and struggled to muffle her panting.

It was a good sign that the footsteps they finally heard were calm. If somebody had seen them, they’d definitely be running.

“I think it was the wards weakening again,” somebody finally said. “It was probably some kids yelling from somewhere on the muggle street.”

“Do you think one wandered in?” another worried.

“Nah, only wizards or witches could get in here. It’d just be a regular alleyway to the muggles,” he replied. “Let’s go back and tell them so we can go to Diagon Alley for our demonstration.”

Lyra, Elliot, and Iris exchanged a wide-eyed look. They were about to leave. If they could sit here very quietly until they did…

Iris seemed to be thinking the same thing. She lowered down to sit on her bottom on the floor, leaned back against the shelf, and then yawned. She laid her head against Elliot’s shoulder as soon as he sat beside her.

“I’m tired,” she yawned again.

Lyra stared at her in shock and wondered how on earth she could feel anything but terror.

* * *

 

It felt like they waited _hours_. They didn’t really know for sure when the people left, so they just waited as long as they possibly could to make sure it was clear. To Lyra’s horror, Iris and Elliot dozed on and off the entire time they waited, whilst Lyra struggled not to have what Papa called a ‘panic attack’. The twins seemed used to feeling like this— so used to it that they appeared a bit bored after a while—but Lyra was _not_.

Lyra picked Star’s box back up and they tiptoed back towards the main hall they’d entered in, but their cautiousness was unnecessary: the group was gone. They hurried back out into the streets of muggle London.

“Now what?” Lyra fretted. She looked around them. “We’re still alone out here for all the child-snatchers and muggle police to find! And we have to get back _home_! Papa and Daddy will be worried about me!”

“We can go to Diagon Alley,” Iris suggested.

“No we absolutely cannot— those bad people will be there! The people who took Dahlia!” Lyra refuted.

“Bollocks on top of bollocks…” Elliot breathed, and at first Lyra thought he was just swearing over their horrid situation, but then she realized he both looked and sounded amazed. “Look at that muggle pub’s lights!!”

He was pointing at what Lyra knew were _neon lights_. The coffee shop Auntie Nora took her to whenever they went to ballet classes in muggle London had loads inside as decoration. She wasn’t impressed.

“Not now,” she snapped at Elliot.

“No,” Elliot insisted. “Mummy and Daddy have got a light like that in their bedroom! And all the time that I see this shop, I think of theirs, and I seen this shop before—”

Iris understood Elliot. She gasped in excitement. She grabbed onto Elliot’s arm and jumped up and down happily. “Elliot!! This is _the shop_!”

For the first time ever, Lyra’s patience shattered in a brand new way.

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?!” she exploded. She slapped her hand over her own mouth a moment later, her ears and the back of her neck heating up in shame. “Oh no! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say that!”

“We pass this shop every time we go see Evangeline!” Elliot beamed. “We can’t apparate or Floo into Delphi’s flat ‘cause she’s mad and a total fucked up nutter so we always apparate close to that shop and then we walk…this way!!”

Without waiting for them or explaining anything else, Elliot set off determinedly in the direction they’d already came. Lyra was less than confident. She hurried after him and Iris.

“Are you sure?!”

“Yes!”

“But loads of muggle shops have signs like that!”

“I’m sure!”

“Crystal clear sure!” Iris seconded. “As clear as dragon piss!”

“But…!”

“But what?!”

“But I’m not allowed to be with Delphi without Daddy, Papa, or Grandfather, or Harry,” Lyra worried. First she ran away from home, then she swore, and now she was breaking the Delphi rule?! She was a bad girl. “I can’t!”

“It’s either that or get stolen by a muggle, killed dead, and turned into a lamp and eaten. Is that what you want?!” Elliot demanded. He glared at her. “We sawed that on _True Crime_ so it’s the damn truth of the world, Lyra. That’s what truth means. They don’t call it _Lie Crime.”_

Lyra was horrified. “What?! How does somebody eat a lamp?!”

“Well probably they cook it.”

“You can’t eat a lamp, that’s stupid! It should be called _Stupid Crime_!” Lyra snapped.

“But it’s not a normal lamp, Lyra,” Elliot refuted. “The muggles kill people—”

“Dead,” Iris added.

“Yeah, they kill them dead as, then they chop them all up like _chop, chop, chop_ , then they use their bones and then their skin too and they make them into a lamp and then they cook up the rest!”

Lyra shook her head as they continued walking. “You’re not right in your head, Elliot.”

“You don’t know my head,” he said haughtily.

What Lyra did know was that this night was the most horrible night she’d ever had, Elliot’s hand was still bleeding (how was he not dead yet?), and her feet were so cold and sore that each step hurt terribly. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be seeing Delphi without somebody there to keep her safe, she wasn’t supposed to run away from home, she wasn’t supposed to swear, she wasn’t supposed to walk barefoot outside, she wasn’t supposed to go into _this part_ of muggle London, and she wasn’t supposed to be out this late.

But despite all of that, and despite her discomfort around Delphi, she had to admit she was relieved when they got to the flat building. And she might’ve been relieved, but the twins were _delighted_. They ran up the stairs, stopped at a dark green door, and began pounding their fists against the wood at once.

“Delphi!” Elliot cried.

“Evangeline!” Iris added.

The door opened quicker than Lyra thought it would. The woman behind it was familiar— Lyra saw her every now and then at family gatherings at Malfoy Manor— but it wasn’t the familiar face Lyra would have chosen. Still, she was glad to be somewhat maybe-safe.

“What…” Delphi trailed off as her eyes trailed over them. Lyra jumped as Delphi’s parrot came out of no where and landed on Delphi’s shoulder. “Lyra? Iris…Elliot? What happened? Where are your parents?”

The parrot gave a sudden squaw. “Hello!” It said. It used its (sharp, very sharp) beak to scratch its tummy feathers for a moment, and then it said: “Suck a fat fucking—”

Delphi reached up and grabbed the parrot at once, startling it enough that its words were drowned in shrieks and caws.

“Come inside,” Delphi said, and the twins didn’t have to be told twice. Iris pulled Lyra in by her hand. “And _shut your beak,_ Evangeline!”

“‘Shut your beak, Evangeline’,” Evangeline mocked. She nipped at Delphi’s finger; she hissed in pain and let the bird go. She soared up above them and began screaming: “Fuck-caw! Fuck-caw! Bottled nut bollock fan! Clusterfuck knob! Hello— didyagettheassignment?— goodbye! Plonker! _Plonker_!”

Lyra shrank backwards and stepped behind Elliot. She hated the bird. She was certain of that. She looked at it warily, certain that it was insane chaos in animal form.

While she cowered, the twins giggled.

“Evangeline!”

“Come here, Evangeline!”

“No, come to me!”

“Hey!! No, I called for you first!”

“It’s my turn! She came to _me_!”

“No, she’s ‘posed to come to _me_!”

“Bird-stealer!”

“ _You’re_ a bird stealer!”

The twins started kicking each other. Delphi stepped in, grabbed each of their shoulders, and separated them at once.

“Cut it out,” she ordered. “You need to tell me how you got here. Are you okay? What happened to your hand, Elliot?”

“‘Cut it out’,” Evangeline cawed. “Bird-stealer! Bird-stealer! Fucking arse monk!”

There was a long pause. Delphi looked incredulously at the bird, perched now on one of the many perches floating midair throughout the flat.

“What’s an arse monk?” Elliot snickered.

“I truly have no idea where she gets this stuff,” Delphi muttered.

“Mummy probably, that’s where we get it from,” Iris said.

“Lyra,” Delphi sighed, turning to face her. Lyra blinked at her, a bit intimated to be in her presence without her dads or Grandfather or Harry. She didn’t know why exactly she wasn’t allowed to be with her without them there, but she knew her papa and daddy probably had a good reason, and that was reason enough for her. “What are you lot doing here?”

Lyra tentatively began to explain— with the twins interrupting and adding their input every few words— and as she did, she kept a suspicious eye on Evangeline. The bird flew and hopped from perch to perch, rambling under her breath nonstop, her eyes crazed and wandering. She knew how much her Lulu loved the bird, but personally, Lyra found her unsettling.

“And then I realized we were close to you,” Elliot said happily. “So we came here ‘cause we knew you can get us home.”

Delphi fell back into an armchair. She sighed deeply for a long time and ran her fingers through her silvery hair.

“Great,” she said. “I’m going to get found harboring Harry Potter’s runaway grandchildren. I _swear_ if I get accused of child abduction…”

“We’ll tell the truth, Delphi,” Lyra said comfortingly. “We did wrong and we know it.”

“Huh?” Elliot hissed to Iris.

Evangeline swooped low, landed once more on Delphi’s shoulder, nuzzled her colorful head against Delphi’s neck, and said: “Dildo wizard! Hustle up! Hustle up!!”

Delphi reached up and rubbed over her eyes warily. It reminded Lyra of Grandfather so forcefully that she nearly giggled. “I literally cannot stand this bird.”

Elliot and Iris _were_ giggling. “Dildo wizard!!”

“No, don’t say that,” Delphi said sharply.

“‘No, don’t say that, dildo wizard,’” Evangeline parroted.

“Stop, Evangeline,” Delphi hissed.

“Stop, dildo wizard!”

Lyra thought Delphi was probably going to lose her temper and open a window one day.

“Okay,” Delphi decided. “I’m going to send a Patronus to your parents and grandparents and hopefully someone will come to collect you. Er…let me see your hand, Elliot.”

Elliot eyed her warily. “You’re not gonna take it and keep it, right?”

“ _What_? Just give me your hand.”

Elliot held it out. He winced and whimpered as she prodded over his wound. To Lyra’s surprise, it’d stopped bleeding all on its own. Delphi cleaned it with a spell, used another spell to put a bandage on it, and then stood.

“Who’s hungry?”

“I’m thirsty,” Lyra, Iris, and Elliot all said at once.

While Delphi went into the kitchen, Lyra watched Elliot and Iris play with Evangeline. She kept coming over, nipping gently at their hair, and then flying away, almost like she wanted them to chase her.

“Evangeline, say _fuck_!”

“Fuck!” Evangeline repeated.

The twins giggled and giggled.

“Say…fuck knob!”

“Fuck knob!!” Evangeline repeated.

More giggling.

“Those are _not_ nice words…oh, whatever,” Lyra muttered. She was tired and she did not care anymore. She walked over, set Star’s box down on the carpet, and then climbed up on Delphi’s sofa. She leaned over and opened the box to let Star out. She sprang free at once. Lyra plopped down on her tummy and hid her face into the sofa. “I hate this day.”

She was drifting off quickly. Before she could, however, she heard Elliot gasp, Iris swear, and Evangeline squawk loudly.

“FUCK OFF! FUCKER— FUCK GLOBLIN— FUCK-CAW!!!” Evangeline panicked.

“Star, no!! Bad kitty! Bad!” Iris exclaimed.

Lyra sat up and peered towards the chaos. Star had clearly just pounced on the bird, but Evangeline had soared up to land on one of her magical perches. She was furious and swearing nonstop. Lyra was starting to get used to the sound of naughty words. She yawned and laid back down again, confident that Star would be okay. Sure enough, her kitten pounced up on her legs a few moments later. Lyra yawned into the sofa cushions as Star kneaded at her calf.

She was nearly asleep already in the short amount of time it took Delphi to return with glasses of pumpkin juice. She was exhausted, but she was thirstier than that, so she sat up and accepted the glass. She really hoped it wasn’t poison because she downed it.

“I sent the Patronuses,” Delphi told them. She sat at the end of the sofa. “I’m sure they’ll be here any moment.”

“Maybe they don’t even know we’re gone,” Iris suggested.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Delphi said dryly. She reached out and tapped Lyra’s ankle. “This one can’t make it three feet without her dads fretting.”

Those words made Lyra feel upset. Poor Papa and Daddy. They were probably sick with worry.

“They won’t be worried ‘cause she’s with us,” Elliot said bravely. “My little sister is safe with me!”

Lyra scowled and reared her leg back. She kicked in Elliot’s general direction, but he was too far to reach, and she was too tired to chase him down.

“I’m _not_ your little sister!” Lyra snapped. “I’m older than you! _Older_!”

“Mmkay,” Elliot muttered skeptically. There was a loud crunch, and then…

“Elliot.”

“Delphi?”

“Are you _eating_ Evangeline’s bird seed?”

“She gave it to me and did you know it’s rude not to take gifts?”

“Of _all_ the things you twins do… _that_ would be the rude thing?”

There was another crunch. “It’s yum.”

“Yum! Yum! Didyagettheassignment?! Yum! Stale suck biscuit!”

“Stale suck biscuit! Ha, ha! Elliot, you’re a stale suck biscuit!” Iris laughed.

“I wish your kitten would put her out of her misery,” Delphi growled to Lyra.

Lyra looked at her in horror. “Iris?!”

“Evangeline.”

“Oh.” Lyra blinked. “You should love your pets, Delphi.”

“Would you believe me if I said I tried but later realized this is hell and Evangeline is my punishment?”

“Probably not.”

“Fair enough.”

* * *

 

Lyra woke as she was lifted. She recognized the arms at once.

“Papa,” she said happily. She smiled. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and hid her face into his shoulder.

Papa hugged her back so tightly that it almost hurt. She could hear loads of voices in the background— Harry, Ginny, Daddy, Grandfather, Lulu, Cade, Delphi— but she was too tired to turn around. And anyway, going by how angry everybody sounded, she thought it was best to shelter herself in Papa’s arms.

“All right, our tearful family hug is over— back up so I can see your faces— okay: are you two fucking idiots?!” Lulu demanded.

“Lily! You can’t call your children that!” Ginny scolded.

“Yeah, you sort of can’t,” Caden agreed.

“I didn’t call them that, I _asked them_ if they _are_ that! And they’re acting like they are! Explain yourselves! Now!”

Lyra lifted her head from Papa’s shoulders. “It wasn’t my idea, I didn’t mean to, I was trying to get Star from the Floo and _he_ threw the Floo powder down and—”

Daddy hurried over ( _Daddy! Yay!)._ He stroked Lyra’s hair back; she leaned into his touch at once.

“Shh, we know, Pumpkin,” he cooed. He leaned over and kissed her hair. “We know this wasn’t your idea.”

“But—” Lyra tried to say, but she was interrupted.

“You left without me! We were a team! You stabbed me in my back, _Mother_!” Iris cried.

Lulu inhaled sharply. “How _dare you_ call me that!”

“You called me a fucking idiot!”

“No, I asked you _if_ you’re an idiot, there’s a difference! You’re five and you ran away from home while they’re snatching up magical children like sodding pumpkin pasties!! What do you propose I call you?!”

“Well, I dunno!” Iris raged.

Elliot shrugged. “Iris and Elliot?” he suggested.

“YOU RAN AWAY AND YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED OR HURT!”

“Or even turned into a lamp,” Elliot added helpfully.

“ENOUGH WITH THE CANNIBAL KILLER SHIT, ELLIOT!”

“…Damn, fine. I was just trying to have your back… _Mother,”_ Elliot muttered.

Lily growled. It reminded Lyra of dragons.

“You two made a huge mistake,” Cade told them severely. “We’re going to talk about it tonight.”

“But Daddy, we—” Iris was interrupted.

“No ‘but Daddy’! I’m so angry with you two I could _scream_!” Lulu raged. “It’s fucking ridiculous!”

Harry stepped in. “To be fair, Lulu, _you_ —”

“This isn’t about me, Dad! This is about the twins!”

“Mm, yeah, it’s sort of about you,” Ginny muttered. “Remember when you and James tried to fly all the way to the Burrow when you were little? Hm? Or when you decided to ignore us and become the leader of a mini-blood supremacist group in Hogwarts?! _Hm_?”

“Well of course I remember that, Mum!”

“And did _I_ ever call _you_ a ‘fucking idiot’?”

“Maybe under your breath…”

“MUMMY, listen to me!” Iris ordered. “Now _you’re_ being a fucking idiot!!”

“What?!” Lulu snapped.

“We found the people who took Dahlia.”

“But she’s back now,” Elliot said cheerfully. “So it’s sort of okay.”

Silence. Lyra peeked out again. Cade was rubbing his eyes warily, Ginny and Lulu were gaping in the same way, and Daddy looked like he might be sick. Grandfather and Delphi exchanged a look.

“What?” Harry asked flatly.

The silence dragged on. It made Lyra uncomfortable. Evangeline swooped down and perched on Lulu’s shoulder.

“Inbred fuck torch,” Evangeline squawked.

Harry turned and looked at Evangeline slowly with a look that could kill.

“She doesn’t mean you,” Lulu said quickly, defending the bird.

Harry looked at the twins. “Don’t repeat what that bird just said.”

“Repeat what?” Iris asked innocently. “Inbred—”

“Don’t—”

“— fuck torch?”

“Language, Iris!”

“I just speak the one and a tiny bit of Māori.”

“Okay,” Cade stepped in. “How about we all sit down and talk?”

“Brilliant idea,” Grandfather agreed.

“ _Ugh_ I _hate_ sitting down! That’s always when we get lectured and it’s _so boring_ ,” Elliot whined.

Lyra had turned her face to the side to rest her cheek against Papa’s shoulder, and from there, she was able to see Ginny grabbing Elliot by his ear. He cried out in protest.

“Ow!! That’s attached to my only brain!! Ow!”

“You’re lucky you’re only getting lectured,” Ginny growled, her eyes on both the twins. “If you were _mine_ , you’d regret everything you’ve ever done, and if you _ever_ run away from home again, I’ll kidnap you myself, adopt you as my own, and make good on that promise. You’ll regret every toe you ever put out of line, and only you two and I know how many that’s really been. Grandmothers see all. Do it again. I _dare_ you.”

Lyra had never seen Elliot and Iris look quite that frightened. They stared at Ginny in horror, nodded quickly, and then grabbed onto Caden’s hands for protection. Ginny let go of Elliot’s ear.

“You got that? Understand?”

He nodded again.

“Now go sit down like your father told you to do and don’t you dare complain again or I’ll give you something to complain about.”

“…Fuck, Mum,” Lulu appreciated, her eyes on Ginny. “I don’t know whether to applaud you or shield my children.”

Ginny stalked off towards the dining room to sit at Delphi’s table. The rest of them followed in.

* * *

 

To be honest, the entire experience had been so frightening that it was muddled up in Lyra’s brain. She did her best to explain what happened to everybody— she did, honestly— but she was so tired and confused that she hardly made any sense. Unfortunately, the twins were similarly incoherent.

“And then the man who was the boss—I think—he said that all the Potters and the Weasleys are trying to take over everything—”

“— and then Elliot cut his hand on something but we don’t know what—”

“—and Lyra found a perfume shop room and it had loads of pretty bottles—”

“—and the people said they were gonna get uhh..uhh…”

“Ben and Evvie,” Lyra provided for them.

“Yeah, gonna get their kids, ‘cause they’ve got two daughters,” Iris affirmed.

“Wait,” Harry said urgently, confused. “Back up. Who said they were going to get the Woods?”

“The man, the bro, the bloke,” Elliot said. “And then they said they wouldn’t get Lyra ‘cause they knew you and Draco would get _them_.”

Daddy and Papa were automatically alarmed. “What?!”

“What did they say about Lyra?!”

“Were they talking about kidnapping her?!”

“They talked about taking all of us, really, only they knew better,” Elliot said. 

“Haha, Harry, Dahlia got them good as gold,” Iris giggled, “she burnt them and ran back home! Did she get back yet?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “She made it to Diagon Alley and then used her key to get into Hugo’s shop, and from there she used the Floo to go home.”

“But she did it _right_ ,” Lulu said pointedly. “Honestly, how did you lot manage to end up in some random person’s house?!”

“I sneezed, I told you!” Elliot said.

“Well, don’t you try ever again without somebody with you,” Cade said. “People can get lost forever in the Floo system.”

“Did they ever say _why_ they’re kidnapping kids?” Draco asked, baffled.

Lyra knew the answer to this one. “Because they want to show you all what it feels like to have your magic kid taken away since their kids had their magic taken away. They think you’ve got a way to make their kids magic again. They think you’re hoarding it or something.”

The adults exchanged a look that Lyra didn’t like. It looked worried and stressed.

“So what are we gonna do?” Elliot asked curiously.

“ _We_ aren’t doing anything,” Harry said firmly. “ _I_ am going to the Ministry to update everybody on what you three found out. _You_ are going home, begging your parents to forgive you, and going to sleep.” There was a pause. Harry leaned in slightly and sniffed Elliot’s hair. “Slight edit. Add a bath in there somewhere.”

Lyra was more than okay with going home. She was so tired she could hardly stir herself awake any longer. When Papa handed her over to Daddy— probably to give his arms a break— Lyra snuggled into Daddy’s arms and sighed against his neck.

“You’re not going to go, right?” she whispered.

Daddy patted her back. “No. Not tonight. I’m going to stay home, I promise.”

Lyra relaxed completely for what felt like the first time in days and days. “Can I sleep in your and Papa’s bed?”

“Of _course_ ,” Daddy said.

The twins had overheard their convo. Iris perked up. “Mummy, can _we_ sleep in _your_ —”

“Absolutely not.”

The twins sighed.

“We run away and almost die and _this_ is the welcome we get,” Elliot hissed. A moment later: “OW! Okay, I’m sorry, let go of my ear, Ginny!”

* * *

 

By the time they were home, everything felt like a dream. Lyra and Star snuggled up in Papa and Daddy’s bed, and when they woke, Lyra was half-convinced she’d made it all up. But something hard in her dressing gown pocket made it all come back to her. She sat up slowly and yawned.

“Good morning,” Papa smiled. Lyra leaned against him and surveyed the rest of the bed, but she had no need for fretting: Daddy was there. He was still asleep on his side of the bed, curled up on his side, his back rising and falling. Lyra wanted to go curl up with him, but first, she stuck her hand into her pocket and pulled out that green bottle she’d stolen.

“Papa,” she began tiredly, “I stole. I did loads of naughty things. I think my cousins are bad influences.”

Papa laughed quietly. “I think you’re probably right. What’s that?”

He reached for the bottle and took it gently from Lyra’s hands. She muffled another yawn into her palm as he examined it. His posture changed after a few seconds.

“Lyra?”

“Yes sir?”

“Where did you get this exactly?”

Lyra turned and looked up at his face. “We were running and there was this room, Papa, and it had so many bottles but they weren’t _all_ like this one, some were pink or purple or blue or red or orange or yellow, and they were all different sizes, and they had different stuff in them, too, and almost every one didn’t have a top but _this one_ did and I dunno why but I took it. I knew it was stealing but…well, it was kind of like when we found the meeting-place for the bad people.When I saw it, I knew it, though I still don’t know exactly what I knew…” she trailed off uneasily.

Papa was quiet. He turned the bottle around and around in his hands. He looked _troubled._

“I’m sorry,” Lyra said quietly, worried he was disappointed in her. “I also said a bad word, I said ‘b-word h-word’.” A pause. “The b-word like the one that ends in a y not the one that ends in _ch, ch_.”

Papa shook his head like he was trying to clear it. He smiled at her again. It reassured her.

“Sometimes Daddy swears by accident, too, and even me sometimes. Let’s not get in the habit, though. Those words offend people. No more ‘b-words’ or ‘h-words’. Okay?”

Lyra nodded at once. “Okay. I didn’t like to say it anyways. It made my mouth feel weird. And I won’t ever steal again, I promise.”

He laughed again. “Lyra, you’re not in trouble for stealing from kidnappers, but I need to keep this. Okay?”

He was holding the green bottle. Lyra had thought she’d be upset about that since she’d gone to such trouble to get the bottle, but she felt entirely at ease with that as if that had always been the plan. She nodded.

“Okay,” she said easily. She snuggled back up to Papa. “I was scared.”

He laughed softly. “I’ll bet you were!”

“Is Harry going to find Mae now? Because of what we told him?”

Papa was quiet. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I hope so.”

Only a moment or so later, Daddy woke, and Lyra was so happy she couldn’t stop smiling as he hugged her and kissed her hair.

“Are you staying forever?”

Daddy sighed. “I wish. For today, at any rate. Well, as long as I can.”

“Forever,” Lyra argued, winding her arms as tight around his middle as she could. “I don’t like when you’re away.”

“I know,” Daddy said, sighing again, but Lyra didn’t think he _did_ know. Sometimes she thought the twins did a better job making themselves understood. Daddy and Papa thought she was sweet and little, and she was, but she had big feelings, too.

“So I want you to stay home and never go to work again,” Lyra continued.

“Lyra…Pumpkin…”

He had that tone, that _my sweet little angel pumpkin_ tone. Lyra certainly _was_ wounded, but she wasn’t being overdramatic. She was _serious_.

“I _mean it_ ,” she said. She scooted back and reached up. She held her daddy’s face in her hands and peered hard at his eyes (her eyes). The longer she looked at him and he looked back, she was certain she couldn’t survive if he abandoned her ever again. Nothing felt right when he was gone from her for so long. The world didn’t feel like the world. “I want you to get a different job. A job that’s one of these things, okay, one: a teacher at my school, two: a…whatever Cade is because he does all his work at the house and never has to go anywhere he doesn’t want to go to, or three: just a daddy.”

Daddy and Papa were sharing a long look over Lyra’s head, but when she looked back at Papa, all she saw was a smile.

“Just a daddy?” Daddy challenged.

Lyra nodded firmly. “People do that. Grandfather did that. He did a great job, I think, because look at Papa.”

Daddy’s look at Papa was longer this time. “I’m looking,” he said, “and I think you must be right, Lyra.”

Her heart leapt with joy and hope. “So you’ll be a daddy as your job?!”

Daddy hugged her tight. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, pumpkin.”

She deflated. She had thought he understood and was taking her seriously, but he was talking like _oh sweet pumpkin angel love_ again.

“But I need you,” she persisted.

“And you’ll always have me. I’m your daddy forever.”

“Except when you’re gone all the time,” Lyra said.

“As soon as all this with the kidnapping is over—”

“Will it be over tomorrow?”

That seemed to confuse him. “I…I don’t know—”

“Because I need it to be over tomorrow. That’s what I need, Daddy. Please, please?”

Daddy sighed so long it reminded Lyra of slowly letting air out of muggle balloons. “I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I know how much you missed me. I missed you, too. It’ll all be over soon.”

Lyra sighed for even longer than Daddy had. She was realizing that he really wasn’t getting it. And he had to get it because she was not okay with him leaving for so long ever again.

He took her sigh to be a sigh of relief. He kissed her head. “It’s all okay,” he reassured her. “You’ll see.”

The only thing Lyra was seeing was that maybe being polite and sweet wasn’t going to get her what she needed this time. Uh oh.

* * *

 

Daddy stayed all morning and then said he’d stay for lunch, too. Lyra was cautiously optimistic, but she hadn’t ruled out the possibility that she would need to throw a tantrum to get her point across. She would wait and see.

Harry and Ginny, Lulu and Cade and the twins, and Uncle Jamie’s family came over for lunch. They used their Nice Dining Area. They only ever used it when they had loads of people over or important Healing people. It had beautiful napkins that Lyra wasn’t supposed to wipe her hands on unless they were hosting a dinner, shining silverware that she wasn’t meant to play with, and a huge snakewood table she mustn’t ever stand on. She was excited to get to eat at it and even more excited when Ginny requested her help with setting the table. She scooted the silver armchairs around the table back nicely, set each place with care, and then she smiled up at Ginny.

“I’ve done it!”

Ginny was placing alcohol bottles in the middle of the table (probably for Lulu). She paused and examined Lyra’s table-setting work. She smiled. “Brilliant job!”

Lyra beamed. “Do you want help with the bottles?”

“Sure. Which one shall we open first?”

Lyra examined the bottles carefully. After a moment of deliberation, she pointed at a dark, tall, skinny bottle with a floral label. “That one!”

Ginny nodded seriously. “Yes,” she said, “the shiraz. A lovely choice.”

“What are we celebrating?” Lyra wondered.

“Dahlia’s safe return,” Ginny said definitely. There was a pause. “And we’re drinking to try and forget walking in on Lily’s ‘work with dragons’ this morning…”

Lyra didn’t understand, but she didn’t understand quite a lot when all the Potters were together, so she just smiled and nodded like she understood.

“Is Dahlia coming today?” Lyra asked curiously.

Ginny smiled and reached over to pull Lyra over into her embrace. She kissed her forehead. “Not today, but she’s happy at home with her parents and her grandparents. She’s actually feeling quite proud of herself.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes, I was there late last night. She’s getting spoiled by my brother and she’ll be just fine.”

“Good,” Lyra said, and she _was_ glad because she loved Dahlia, but she was worried about Mae, too. And she didn’t want Daddy to go away again.

“How are you? Last night had to have been quite the adventure,” Ginny said lightly.

“It was scary. I wish I’d been in our library instead,” Lyra declared.

Ginny patted her hair. “That’s the Scorpius-genes talking. Good. Let them speak.”

Uncle Jamie and Auntie Nora babied Lyra and the twins enough that even Lyra noticed she was being babied. She thought it was probably because they could have been hurt, but Iris told her it was because they were heroes.

“It must have been so scary to be in there with all those bad men,” Nora told them sympathetically.

Lyra nodded her head at once, her eyes ardent.

“It was sort of scary-fun,” Elliot told Nora. He reached out a second later and tried to steal his mum’s wine glass for the tenth time that meal. Lulu smacked his hand without even glancing his way.

“We just want to _try it_ ,” Iris moaned. “Please, Mummy? _Please,_ Daddy?”

Cade and Lulu looked at each other once, and then Cade said: “Oh, what the hell. Fine. Go on.”

“Caden—!” James cried, aghast.

“No, by all means,” Lulu said, holding her glass out towards the twins. They fought over it at once.

“I go first! I was born first so I’m always first!” Iris demanded.

“No! You already got to go first when you were born so now it’s _my_ turn!”

“Here,” Caden said. He handed Elliot his. “Now you’ve both got one.”

Lyra watched on curiously— as most of the table was doing— as the twins lifted the glasses and took what even Lyra recognized was a too-large sip. When grown-ups drank alcohol, they took tiny baby sips, but the twins took a massive mouthful like it was pumpkin juice and they’d been dehydrated in a desert for ages. They realized their mistake quickly. Elliot turned and spat the wine out in Cade’s face; he shut his eyes, sighed, and sat there for a moment with the wine dripping down his face. Iris didn’t appear to like it any better— she’d made an unhappy sort of sound in the back of her throat— but she didn’t spit hers out. She lowered her brow in determination and winced through it as she loudly swallowed the sip.

“I didn’t think they’d actually swallow it,” Lulu admitted. She glanced over at Papa. “Er— is she going to die?”

Papa waved his wand and summoned the wine bottle over into his hands. He examined the label. “Probably not.”

“Now you know what it tastes like,” Cade said, mopping at his face and neck with one of the expensive silver-stitched napkins. “So will you two stop harassing us for some every single time now?”

“I liked it,” Iris said stubbornly.

“Your eyes are watering,” Finnigan scoffed. “You do not like it.”

“I do so! I do!” Iris cried. “It burns my throat like fire and that’s bad ass!”

“Liar!”

“She’s not a liar!” Benji defended at once.

“She is so a liar, Benjamin.”

“Okay,” Nora interjected. “Let’s not bicker.”

“Why? Why not?” Finnigan challenged. “It’s fun to bicker with the twins.”

“Yeah? Is sitting alone in your room all weekend fun?” Nora asked curiously.

Finnigan shut his mouth immediately. Lyra saw Nora and Ginny high-five across the table.

“So what happened at the Ministry?” Henry asked Harry, loudly enough that Lyra heard and turned her focus to them. “Did they catch the Free Magics who took Dahlia?”

“We’re working on it,” Harry said tiredly. “We’re having a difficult time finding the place the twins and Lyra found.”

The twins perked up. “ _We can_ —!”

“Eat your damn sprouts,” Ginny told them sternly.

They shared a bemused look. Lyra could tell they were considering arguing with her. She hoped they wouldn’t. Nobody should argue with Ginny. She could hug the best out of anybody in the world, but also, she meant business.

“What about Mae? Any news on her?” Finnigan wondered.

Lyra saw Harry and Daddy look at each other. Daddy answered instead of Harry.

“Not yet, but we don’t have any reason to think she’s been harmed. They’re probably just hiding her somewhere thinking they can use her as leverage,” Daddy said.

“Do you think she’s in the same place Lyra and the twins were?” Rory piped up.

“Dunno,” Daddy said. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Lyra thought about the weird place. She didn’t think that would be nice at all.

“Yeah nah, because even though you’d find her quick, that place was _horrible,”_ Elliot shared. He twisted in his seat to face Finnigan’s direction. “Finnigan, you know how you said kidnappers chop up people?”

Nora gasped. Papa set a hand over his mouth. Finnigan nodded.

“Muggle nutters. Like the ones you and Iris see on your telly program.”

Elliot nodded back at him. “Yes. Well, where we were seemed like where that would happen.”

“Are _you_ the one who told Lyra that Mae was going to get…” Papa trailed off. He looked upset.

“I never said Mae was!” Finnigan defended himself.

“She’s five, Finnigan!” Jamie scolded. “You know better than to talk like that around the babies! Where did you even hear about that sort of awful stuff?!”

“From Roxie!”

Jamie huffed. “Well don’t talk to her anymore!”

Finnigan and Henry looked at each other, confused. “What? Don’t talk to Roxie anymore _at all_?!”

“Yes! No! I mean—not about…that!” James amended.

Ginny tsked. “Messy save, James. Harry, hold my wine.”

Harry took the wine with a vaguely amused expression. Ginny cleared her throat. Lyra thought she was about to scold Finnigan, perhaps for scaring her, but then she said: “5.5”

It took Uncle Jamie a moment. He did a double-take. “Are you…are you rating _my_ parenting?! _”_

Ginny took her glass back from Harry. She stared unapologetically at James as she took a sip.

“Payback’s a bitch, James,” Lulu laughed.

Without missing a beat, Ginny turned to Lulu and said: “Your kids ran off to a kidnapping lair. 2. You gave them wine at a family gathering at age five. 4.5.”

“4.5? Really? That’s generous,” Cade commented lowly.

Daddy was snickering. He found it really funny, though Lyra wasn’t sure why, but she giggled along with him anyway.

“4.5! Great job, Lu,” he teased.

Ginny faced Daddy. “Dunno what _you’re_ laughing about. Your kid ran off to a kidnapping lair, too. 2.”

Harry sighed. He shook his head with mock sadness. “You lot will _have_ to do better.”

“Our average is a strong 7.3. Get on our level,” Ginny added.

“Hang on,” Lulu protested. “ _James_ rated your parenting. Shouldn’t _our_ kids be the ones rating ours, too? That’s only fair. Gran and Granddad didn’t rate you and dad, after all.” She turned to face the twins. “Iris, Elliot. On a scale from one to ten, what would you score my and daddy’s parenting?”

The twins looked at each other and then back to Lulu.

“Between one and ten?” Iris clarified.

Lulu nodded. “Yep. One to ten.”

“Hm,” Iris said.

“Hmm…” Elliot said.

“A six and one half,” they finally chorused.

If looks could kill, the twins would’ve been dead.

“A six?! A _six?!_ ” Lulu demanded.

“What the fuck is the half for?” Cade wondered.

Daddy was cackling now.

“Lyra,” he asked, and Lyra looked at once to him. “What would you rate me? How good of a dad am I?”

Lyra smiled and smiled. “A _ten million_!” she declared.

“I’m confident that brings my average up well above a 7.3.”

“Harry and I were never in competition with any other parents so that way worked just fine, but you lot need a more standardized scale. Ergo, we’ll be the judges. Jamie— you get high marks for being loving and fun, but you’re a bit overextended with all the kids, so that knocks a couple points off. Albus, you’re patient and adoring with Lyra, but if she woke up one morning and decided she wanted to be a little tyrant, the world would be at her mercy because you’d never do anything at all to rein her in. Your lack of discipline only works because you happen to have a child who doesn’t particularly want to do anything rebellious. Lily…” Ginny trailed off. She sighed. “Lily, Lily, Lily, my darling daughter…where do I start…you get points for giving your children space to discover the world and freedom to be their honest, wild selves, but you lose points for swearing at them, letting them run off alone when they don’t even have any permanent teeth in yet, etcetera…”

“So what would my overall score be, then?” Daddy demanded.

“Yeah!” Jamie agreed. He paused. “I _do_ see how this rating thing would encourage us to try harder next time. We do respond well to competition.”

“You don’t need to try any harder,” Nora told him sweetly. “You’re already the world’s best dad. Isn’t that right?”

His kids chorused a hundred _yes_ es. Uncle Jamie beamed.

“We’ll average it all out once your kids are adults,” Ginny said, waving her hand dismissively. “Let’s live in the moment for right now.”

“In this moment, I want dessert,” Iris piped up. Lyra was surprised to see she’d already eaten _all_ her vegetables. Probably because Lulu and Cade mostly ate what Jamie called ‘rabbit food’.

“Oh, _sorry_ ,” Lulu told Iris, her voice dripping with sarcastic apology. “Dessert after lunch is part of the _deluxe_ parenting package for parents scoring 8.5 or above. Your dad and I, as 6.5-scoring peasants, cannot deliver on that wish. You’ll have to wait until we’re upgraded.”

“What?!” Elliot said, crestfallen. “No more lunch dessert?!”

“We didn’t say you got a 6 point 5. We said 6 and one half,” Iris corrected them.

“Same thing,” Lulu said.

“No! It’s not!”

“Yes, it’s literally the same thing.”

“Okay, but good news, Mummy: I know how you can improve yourself.”

Lulu and Cade shared a look that was not very amused.

“How so?” Lulu finally challenged.

Iris swung her feet under the table as she spoke. “You can finally make me a fire whisky coffee since I’ve been asking for _ages_ and I’ll bump you right up to a 8.5.”

Cade shook his head. “You really can’t stand to give us even an inch, can you? You could’ve gone for a 9, but no, you’ve got to give us exactly what we’d need to give you dessert and nothing more.”

“A 9?” Iris demanded. “That’s one away from a perfect score. Mummy left us at the market once and went home without us.”

“That was on _purpose_ ,” Lulu scoffed.

“Yeah,” Ginny said, “I don’t think that makes it any better at all, Lu.”

“Don’t worry,” Elliot told Lulu. He stroked her long hair softly as he did. “One day you’ll be good at this. You’ve just got to keep practicing. Like me with swimming or Finnigan with riding a broom.”

“I ride a broom just fine, four-eyes,” Finnigan said, but it wasn’t in a mean way, and Elliot laughed. “It’s everybody else who’s riding it wrong.”

“What’s your take on that comment, famed Harpies player, Sports editor, occasional Hogwarts flying instructor?” Jamie asked.

“I say Finnigan will always have the upper hand in a Quidditch match because the other team will _never_ see him coming.”

“Diplomatic,” Jamie grinned. “8-point grandparenting.”

Ginny set her fist down on the table. “Oh no! No, absolutely not! Your time to rate us is over! Our time has just begun! Dad and I are retired!”

Retired— like it was a job. That gave Lyra a brilliant idea. She turned and grabbed Daddy’s arm excitedly accidentally causing him to spill half his pumpkin juice down his front. Papa waved his wand wordlessly and fixed it.

“Yes?” Daddy asked calmly.

“You can retire from your Auror job and just be a dad all the time and then you’ll get loads of 10s from Harry and Ginny!”

Ginny didn’t give Daddy a chance to reply. “That’s a thought, Albus! You’re such a clever girl, Lyra! Lyra, your dad would be _great_ at quitting his job. I agree with you. Let’s do it.”

“‘Quitting’ is a profession, Mum,” Daddy grumbled. He poked at his lunch with his fork. “I can’t just do nothing.”

“Nobody said you’d do nothing,” Ginny countered firmly. “You’d be a full-time parent.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

Ginny sighed. “Scorpius, can’t you talk to him?”

“Trust me, I talk to him all the time. I talk to him in the morning, I talk to him at breakfast, I talk to him at lunch, I talk to him in the afternoons, I talk to him in the evenings, I talk to him at dinner, I talk to him at bedtime, I even talk to him in my sleep, but still he remains stubborn and immovable,” Papa answered.

“I’m _not_ stubborn,” Daddy grumbled. Even Lyra had to giggle at that.

“You should just do it, Al,” Lulu said. “Just quit! Fuck your boss!”

“Yeah! Fuck that guy!” Elliot cheered.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a full-time parent,” James told Daddy. Lyra was excited that all these people were taking _her_ side. She sat up straighter and beamed. “It’s the best thing in the world to be. If every kid had a good full-time parent, _I_ could quit my job and be a full-time parent.”

Daddy mumbled something under his breath, but Lyra didn’t hear what he said exactly. She caught him looking at _his_ dad, though.

“Al,” Harry said. Maybe he’d noticed that, too. “You need to do what’s going to make you happiest. If being cooped up at home will drive you mad, don’t quit. But if you hate work as much as you say you do…why do it?”

“Er, to help people?” Albus suggested.

“I’m a people— I mean, a person,” Lyra said. “You can just stay home and help me.” A pause. “Or be my teacher so then I’m with you in the morning, then I’m with you at the daytime, then I’m with you at night.”

“If you _really_ wanted to help people and be altruistic or whatever, you’d stay with your kid,” Lulu said.

Lyra couldn’t help herself. She sat up and kneeled in her seat so she was taller and exclaimed: “Yeah!!”

Daddy looked from her to Lulu, confused.

“Do you realize what a basket case she is with you gone so much?” Lulu continued. “She’s…not herself. She’s nearly an unstable, naughty child. Elliot gets the same way when he feels like he’s not being heard. All the crying and emotion explosions…if you want to help somebody, help your kid. You don’t want to risk pushing her to the Dark Side because I have a hunch she’d be _brilliant_ at it.”

Lulu said _the dark side_ like it was a real, actual thing. It alarmed Lyra somewhat. Where was this place and why would she be good at being in it?

“Well maybe you should take your own advice,” Daddy shot back. He seemed a bit insulted.

“Oi, don’t start something, I wasn’t trying to offend you! I was only saying! And I can’t take my own advice because I’d pull my hair out and run screaming naked into the woods. I need an outlet. I know myself. I’m being altruistic by not subjecting my family to the disaster that is me without my dragons.”

“I was the same way,” Harry agreed. “Al just needs to decide whether he’s that way, too.”

Lyra didn’t think Daddy would be upset staying home with her all day. When he did on weekends, they smiled and laughed the whole time it seemed. Work was what made Daddy sad; the nonstop owls and the meetings and the homework. Lyra knew all that, but when she glanced at Daddy, he just looked confused.

“If you think you still need something to do, Al, I can always get you a nice job with the _Daily—”_

_“Mum.”_

Ginny sighed. “Fine. Be that way.”

* * *

 

Lyra was beyond mad. Lyra was cross. Lyra was furious. Lyra was…

“I’m…I’m…absolutely, positively _irate_!”

Daddy finished pulling his work cloak on and looked down at Lyra with a small smile. “All right then, Lyra the Thesaurus. When does Papa teach you all these words?”

Lyra did not smile back. “You said you weren’t going today!”

“I’m just going with them to meet with Ben and Evvie. We’re having Aurors shadow them for a bit for protection, and I want to be there to help explain what’s going on.”

“But why?!” Lyra whined. She could feel a tantrum brewing.

“Because they’re my friends. Sort of. Evvie’s my…well, she’s like a very annoying elder sister. But Jamie loves them, and I love him most of the time, so I love them, too.”

“What about _me_?!” Lyra cried. “Don’t you love _me_?”

Daddy paused. That question seemed to upset him more than any other that’d been thrown his way that day, and Elliot had asked him if dementors poo.

“Of _course_ I love you,” Daddy said quietly. He walked over and kneeled in front of Lyra. Her eyes were swelling with tears. Screaming was imminent. Daddy gently held her face in his hands and guided her eyes up so they could look at each other. She was choking on her sadness; breathing was hard. “Lyra, take a deep breath, pumpkin. Come here.”

He gently kissed her forehead, but that only made her cry harder, and then he wrapped her up in his arms so tightly that Lyra could only hear the weird _thump-thumpthumpthump-thump_ of his heart.

“I love you more than anything in this entire world,” he whispered to her.

“Then _why_ are you leaving me and making me _suffer_?” Lyra asked pitifully. She knew her tears and snot were getting on Daddy’s cloak, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She gripped him tighter. “I t-told you and t-told you how I feel and you’re n-not l-listening to me.”

“I am! I am listening, Lyra.”

“No! Because I told you I will die if you leave me again! _Die_!”

“You will not die. I promise you won’t die.”

“ _DIE!”_ Lyra insisted.

“Lyra, be reasonable,” Daddy said softly.

“I am! I am! I _am_!” Lyra chanted, enraged. “I want my daddy, I want my daddy, I want my daddy, _I want my —”_

Up next on her strop lineup was full-blown sobbing and shrieking, complete with pounding the floor with her fists (she was _that_ serious about this), but she never got the chance. Papa hurried in at the commotion right as Daddy yanked Lyra in for another hug, muffling her words against his cloak.

“And I want to be _here_ with my daughter, with _you_ ,” he told her softly, pained. “And believe me, Lyra, were it anything _but_ this, I’d owl them and quit right this moment. But this is your safety…this is you. They could come for _you_. And I need to know what’s happening, I need to understand, I need to be in the loop—”

“Harry _is the loop_!” Lyra argued. “So you’ll always and always be in it!”

“She’s got a point,” Papa said, his hand falling on Daddy’s shoulder. “I’d feel better with you home. You know my thoughts on it.”

“I know,” Daddy said to Papa, his voice still soft. He sighed a moment later. Lyra felt him pull once on her shoulders, and when she leaned back, he was peering seriously at her. “I can’t promise anything because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But I can promise you I’ll be back in one hour. Just one. Okay?”

Lyra thought about it. An hour wasn’t so long, really: she could read some books and an hour would have passed before she realized it. She nodded hesitantly.

“Okay. An hour? Just one?”

“Just one. Papa can set a timer and everything.”

Lyra nodded again. “Yes, okay. I think that will be okay with my heart.”

Daddy laughed a bit. Lyra _did_ smile that time. “Good.”

Daddy stood to leave, but Lyra wasn’t upset because Papa hoisted her up into his arms a moment later. He kissed her face until she was giggling and squirming in his arms, and then he asked: “Do you want to go up to the library?”

Lyra beamed.

* * *

 

“All that and she’s asleep when I get home?! Twenty-five minutes _early,_ mind you, write that down.”

“She was exhausted. But we could tell that from her outburst,” Papa whispered.

Daddy sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“When it’s time for you to know, you will.”

Daddy snorted softly. “When did you get so…mystic?”

“When Lyra brought me _this_.”

Lyra had no idea what Papa showed Daddy— she was still half-asleep in Papa’s lap, snuggly and warm under her favorite reading blanket— but Daddy inhaled in surprise when he saw it.

“Is that…?”

“Yes. I don’t know what to do with it, Albus. I’ve just been carrying it around in my pocket. If it’s what I always thought it was…”

“You need to take it to…to…somebody! Evvie or—or…” Daddy trailed off. “So are the Free Magics working on their own cure, too? I thought they were just trying to steal our hypothetical cure?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know. What confuses me more is how Lyra knew to grab this.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Daddy said quietly, amazed. “I didn’t think of that. Oh, and we can’t tell Lyra yet, but—”

“Hang on,” Papa said quickly. He shifted Lyra a bit. She tried hard not to move, but she knew she’d been found out. Papa pulled the blankets back slightly and peered down at her. She could feel the coldness of the open air as it hit her face. “I think she’s waking up. Lyra?”

“Pumpkin?”

Lyra opened her eyes slowly. “Hi.”

Papa and Daddy smiled. “Hey.”

She desperately wanted to know what it was that she couldn’t know yet, but she was momentarily distracted by the wonderful fact that they were all three together. Daddy wasn’t working, Papa wasn’t working, she wasn’t at school…it was the way things always should have been. It was the way she would have made it if she had any control over it at all.

“How does dinner, loads of chocolate frogs, and a game of Chess sound?” Daddy asked.

“It sounds like a 9.5,” Lyra said seriously.

Her dads exchanged a look and laughed. And for right then, nothing in the entire world was wrong.

 

 


	22. III. Long and Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my computer since June :( I'm so sorry! I still have a lot going on, but I figured I'd go ahead and post this instead of letting it collect dust for another three months. Thanks so much to those who are reading.

She’d just begun the final line on the last part of her vault plan when the table beneath her shifted without warning. The point of her quill shifted and slipped; she inhaled sharply in horror as a line appeared across the entire page where a line ought not to be, effectively ruining the vault plan. And she was very patient— she knew she was, and that was a trait she admired in herself— but a person could only put up with so much. She spun around and pinned Henry with a glare. It was only her love for him that kept her from screaming.

“Henry,” she began, her words tight with irritation. She paused. She took a deep breath in, held it for ten seconds, thought about Henry’s little dimple the first time he smiled, and then slowly exhaled. Henry took two steps backwards. “I said stop it! This is the third time today! Stop moving the furniture with magic!”

Another step back. “I didn’t mean to—

“Yes, you did! Don’t lie to me! You and Delilah have been having a competition all week and your dad and I told you to cut it out after she made the chandelier in the dining room fall!” Nora’s voice had risen more than she would’ve liked near the end of her spiel. She realized with chagrin that her eyes were burning. She gestured at her plan. “I’ve spent weeks on this, and now it’s…” she broke off and let her hand fall to her side. She took another deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” Henry admitted, after a tense pause between the two of them. At nine-years-old, he rarely said Mummy anymore. Nora found she was so upset that it hardly cheered her up much to hear it. Henry padded over sheepishly. He rested his cheek against her arm and reached for her hand, threading their fingers together. Nora turned her face and pressed it briefly into his dark, sweet-smelling curls. “Dad’s got ink remover in his office. I’ll go Floo and get some and then I’ll fix it. I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to mess your work up.”

She knew he really hadn’t meant to mess her up, but he had been moving furniture with magic, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to do that. She thought about snapping back with that, but he was trying to make things right, and he was a child, and nothing she was stressed about was his fault— not really. 

“It won’t work, unfortunately,” she finally said. “The plans can’t be tampered with; everything has to be pristine and original. Ink remover damages the special parchment, too.” She let her hand fall from Henry’s and sat back in her seat. She pulled her plans over to her wearily. “I’ll just copy them out again.”

Henry hesitated awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“I know. Just… _please_ stop, okay? And go on and clean the dishes since you didn’t listen the first time we told you to stop.” 

Remarkably, he didn’t argue. “Okay. Sorry…”

He must’ve realized how stressed she was. Nora turned and peeked at him as he walked off, surprised to see he wasn’t even stamping as he did. She lifted her wand from the cup it was sitting in, summoned another length of plan parchment to her, and then rested her left arm on the edge of the silk parchment to hold it in place as she lifted her quill with her right and set back to work. She started with the back of the vault as she always did. She was so tired her hand trembled a bit; she quickly lifted the quill before she messed it up again. She set her quill down, stretched her fingers a bit, and studied the ruined copy of the plans to make sure her mental image was still sharp and accurate. It was, of course; she could see her vault in her mind’s eye as easily as she could see the things she painted. That made it all the more frustrating that she couldn’t seem to get it on parchment the proper way. The goblins’ deadline for this particular project was on Friday, and she just kept hitting set-back after set-back. 

“MUMMY!” Benji called up the stairs, right as she lifted her quill again. “CAN I HAVE A BISCUIT?!” 

“No,” Nora called back. She began drawing the lines again, pausing for a moment to conjure an architect’s scale when needed. “It’s too close to dinner, it’s…” she paused and twisted in her stool, glancing over at the clock on the studio wall. Her heart jolted. How was it already past four?! 

“BUT DELILAH IS EATING CAKE!” 

“Well, Delilah shouldn’t be eating cake! She’s supposed to be doing her work! Delilah!” 

While Nora waited for her daughter to respond, she sped up her drawing, tracing neat, precise lines as quickly as possible. The girls had ballet in twenty minutes and James still wasn’t home and she wasn’t even close to ready—

“I WASN’T, MUM, HE’S LYING!” Delilah whined up the stairs. 

“He’d better be because I told you you weren’t having any of that cake ’til tonight! I’ll throw it in the bin if you sneak some again! Now go do your reading— you’ve got a test tomorrow!” 

“Aw, Mum, it’s boring and I hate muggle school! And I hate this book! Who names their fox character Mr Fox?! It’s like naming Pippi Longstocking ‘Miss Little Girl’!” 

“I didn’t ask if it was interesting, I said— ugh!” Nora’s words turned into a horrified and frustrated cry as her hand shook again, causing her usually perfectly-straight lines to appear wobbly. She set her quill down and let her face rest on the desk for a moment. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she told herself, over and over, until she found her calm once more. 

“MUM, LOU JUST WOKE UP, AND HE SMELLS AWFUL!” Finnigan shouted. “I’M GOING OUT WITH ALLEN, OKAY?!” 

Nora jumped up at once. She hurried over to the attic door, pushed it all the way opened, and hurried down the stairs. 

“Not okay!” she called as she descended the stairs. Finnigan was already pulling his coat on when she made it to the kitchen. Lou was shrieking so loudly from the cot in the sitting room that it was overwhelming even in the kitchen. She walked over and pulled Finnigan’s coat from his arms. “You aren’t allowed to run off alone right now. You know that, Finnigan!” 

Finnigan’s lips pressed into a tight, angry line. His eyes followed her as she backed through the doorway leading to the sitting room to retrieve Lou. Lou was ordinarily quiet and sweet, but the horrid smell in the air explained his discontent. Nora scooped him up quickly and carried him over to the changing table in the corner. Finnigan followed after her. 

“It’s not _fair_ —!”

“Love, I know it’s not fair,” she interrupted him tersely. She pulled Lou’s soiled sleep suit off and sent it soaring towards the sealed laundry bin with a flick of her wand. She summoned ordinary muggle baby wipes after that; she thought they did a better job than a standard scourgify. She continued arguing with Finnigan as she began cleaning Lou up. “It is what it is. I can’t have you roaming about. Not right now. With what happened to Dahlia…you can’t, Finn.”

Lou cooed and chewed contently on his hands once he was clean and in a fresh sleepsuit. Nora turned and passed him to Finnigan so she could go wash her hands. He followed after her, Lou cooing loudly in his arms the entire time. 

“But I’m not a baby, Mum, I can take care of myself, okay, I promise I’ll be so careful, we just want to ride our bikes to King Square—”

“No, Finnigan! Your dad and I talked about this with you and nothing’s changed— DELILAH, RORY, COME ON, WE’VE GOT TO GET READY!”

There was a pause. “FOR WHAT?!” Rory yelled from the second level. 

“BALLET!” 

“THAT’S NOT TODAY!” 

“IT IS! IT’S EVERY MONDAY! GET YOUR SISTER; I’VE GOT YOUR THINGS DOWN HERE!” 

“BUT I’M BUILDING SOMETHING!” 

“YOU’LL HAVE TO FINISH LATER! LET’S GO!” 

Tired of screaming back and forth, Nora ended their argument, turned, and headed towards the drawing room that their laundry had ended up piled in. The desks and tables were towering with folded clothes yet to be put away and the floor was a maze of laundry baskets bursting with clean— but unfolded— articles of clothing. Nora weaved between the baskets, followed relentlessly by Finnigan, who was still arguing his point in an increasingly desperate tone. She rummaged through a few stacks of clothes in search of the girls’ tights and leotards. 

“Here’s Lyra’s she left— oh, I hope Albus has another for her…here’s Delilah’s…where did I put Rory’s?!” 

“And Allen’s stepdad is _massive_ , Mum, so if he went with us you’d have nothing to worry about…”

“Ah-ha!” she whispered, spying the periwinkle of Rory’s leotard. She pulled it free from the bottom of the stack, causing three or four items on top to topple over, but that was a problem for later. 

“And I’ll come straight home the moment somebody looks at me funny, and—”

Rory appeared. “Do I _have_ to go?” 

Nora tossed her leotard and tights at her. “Yes. Your dad and Alice are still out. There’s nobody here to watch you.” 

That got Finnigan off his park-obsession. “Wait— does that mean I’ve got to go, too?!” 

“Yes. We’re all going.” 

You would’ve thought she’d just told them to go to hell with the way they began exclaiming in outrage. Their outburst got the attention of all the rest of the kids, and soon the sitting room was bursting with all six who were home (Evra was at Hogwarts, Alice was with James), and none of them were particularly happy except for baby Lou. 

“I want to finish what I was building!” 

“I’ve got a test tomorrow, remember?!”

“Why can’t I just go to the park? Please, Mum, I really want to go play with Allen!”

“I’m too hungry to go anywhere: I need biscuits!” 

“Can’t we go to Ginny and Harry’s?!” 

“You can’t,” Nora said, answering Benji’s plea. She passed Delilah her ballet clothes; she took them with a displeased look. “Ginny and Harry are busy. Everybody’s busy. We’re all going to ballet.”

Were it any other ordinary time in their shared life, things would have been different. Harry and Ginny could have certainly watched some of the kids. James probably would have been home so they wouldn’t have even had to (even though they could have). Nora wouldn’t have been so stressed. It would have been perfectly safe for Finnigan to ride his bike to the park with his muggle best friend. But it wasn’t an ordinary time. Magical children were getting kidnapped…Dahlia, Hugo’s child, had gotten kidnapped just week or so ago. And their entire society was worried and stressed, possibly none more than James and Nora.  
Right before they left the house, they faced another inconvenience: rain. 

“Wait, wait,” Nora said, pausing in the front hall. She eyed the rain coming down in torrents through the gauzy curtains. “Get your raincoats. Quickly, quickly!” 

Most of her children listened and hurried to the various places they’d laid their coats down the last time they wore them, but Finnigan hung back. 

“Mine doesn’t fit,” he told Nora. 

Nora finished pulling her own raincoat on and set about carefully buttoning it up around Lou, enough to keep him warm and dry in the carrier attached to her chest, but not enough to make it difficult for him to breathe. 

“Sure it does,” Nora said absently, her mind on Lou’s comfort and safety. 

“It doesn’t, Mum,” he persisted, annoyed. “Nothing does. Look at my shirt!” 

She looked up as he stretched his arms out, and sure enough, his jumper sleeves were so short they looked like three-quarter length sleeves. Nora sighed. 

“We’ll go shopping this weekend,” she promised. The rest of the kids hurried back in, bundled up in their— mostly hand-me-down— raincoats. Poor Finnigan, being the eldest boy, had no hand-me-downs to wear when he outgrew his clothing, and he seemed to be growing each and every night. 

They walked together in the rain the short distance to the dance academy. Nora caught Finnigan staring wistfully in the direction of King Square Gardens as they did; it was very near to the dance academy. She felt guilty, but she knew she had good reason for telling him no. She couldn’t risk his safety. 

She pulled the hood of her raincoat down and unbuttoned the coat from around Lou as soon as they stepped into the cool studio. To her relief, the waiting room held five familiar faces. She waved and smiled at both Albus and Evvie. Lyra and Hazel were already bouncing around Nora’s kids, chatting and laughing. Even if they seemed not to notice Dahlia’s absence, Nora did. It left her chest feeling bruised with worry. 

“You look flustered,” Nora’s best friend greeted. Her two-year-old, Violet, born only six months before Alice, was sitting between Evvie and Albus and playing with a magical ball that projected different things into the air above it. Right now, it was entertaining Violet with a view of a school of multicolored fish. Lou turned his head slightly and stared in wonder at the fish as soon as Nora sat on Albus’s other side. 

“Pretty fish,” Violet told Nora happily. “They swim everywhere!” 

Nora smiled at her and reached out to stroke her hair affectionately. “They’re lovely,” she said kindly. 

“Where’s Alice?!” Albus demanded, crestfallen. He and Alice were two-peas-in-a-pod, something that always amused Nora since Albus was who Alice was named after. Alice would go to the ends of the earth for her ‘Al’, and he would for her, too. 

“With James,” Nora answered. She set a hand on Albus’s knee in greeting, and then she leaned over him to face Evvie and address her first comment. “I am a bit flustered. It’s been a difficult day.” 

“Is my brother being a git?” Albus guessed. He didn’t take his eyes off the kids as he spoke, watching with a sort of fierce protectiveness that made Nora certain that he’d strangle anybody who so much as looked too long at Lyra. 

“No,” Nora said defensively. Her heart felt tender and soaked with longing as she thought of James. He’d been working all day. She missed him (and her darling Alice, who had gone to work with him that day.) She knew that was part of the reason things had been so stressful. “There’s just a lot going on.”

“I can imagine,” Albus sympathized. Nora felt a bit better when he reached out and wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. She leaned into his familiar embrace and sighed heavily. “Scorpius and I feel like we’re being run up the walls when the twins are here, and that’s only three kids, not eight— or, well, seven with Evra at Hogwarts.”

Her heart only felt heavier. She missed her eldest daughter so much that she didn’t even like to speak about it. It never got easier, and next year Finnigan would be gone, too, and Rory as well…

She stopped. That wasn’t a good line of thinking for her right now, and she knew enough about herself to recognize that. 

“Speaking of the twins…” Albus trailed off suspiciously. He stood up. “They’ve been in the toilet for a long time…” 

Nora spun to face him at once. “You brought the twins to _ballet_?” 

She couldn’t think of a more ill-suited activity for them, except perhaps attending Catholic Mass or attempting transcendental meditation at the yoga studio. She looked at Albus like he’d lost his mind, but he was already hurrying to the small toilet tucked near the back of the waiting room. 

“Is Lily here?” Nora asked Evvie. 

“No,” Evvie answered. “I’m not sure why Albus has the twins, but Lyra and Hazel were excited that they tagged along.”

“And we’re glad to see them excited,” Nora said, feeling safe to speak for the both of them. They’d been on the muggle phone together for hours two nights ago, both worried about their children— particularly Evvie’s— in the light of Dahlia’s kidnapping and the revelation that the Free Magics were plotting on coming after the Woods. They’d both been scared that the kids would be as scared as they were, so it was good to see them all giggling and running around the waiting area like nothing was different at all. 

It didn’t take long for Albus to emerge with the twins in tow. He was holding them both tightly by their hands and hissing something to them through clenched teeth. He pointed at Nora’s feet. 

“Sit by your aunt!” he ordered. 

“On the _floor?_ ” Elliot said, outraged. 

“Like _animals_?!” Iris cried, insulted. 

“Oh, now you’re noble and too good to sit on the floor? When you two were just playing in the toilet?!” Albus demanded. 

“That’s disgusting and unhygienic,” Evvie scolded. “I’m going to tell your father.”

“We weren’t playing in the toilet! We were playing in the sink!” 

“That’s what I meant! You were playing inside the toilet!” 

“We weren’t in the toilet,” Elliot persisted, “we were playing in the sink!” 

“He means you were playing inside the loo when you ought not to have been,” Nora interrupted. “The loo is for doing your business and that’s it. Not for playing in the sink.” 

“No, you do your business in the toilet,” Elliot corrected. 

Albus swore underneath his breath in annoyance. Evvie eyed the twins’ hands. 

“Did you wash your hands after playing in there?” 

“Of course. We were playing in the sink! That’s all we were doing— washing our hands!” Iris cried. 

“Over and over and over until we got so many bubbles they were above the sink!” 

Nora shook her head, but she couldn’t say anything. Almost every one of her kids had played in a sink at some point. Lyra clearly hadn’t going by Albus’s incredulous were-these-kids-raised-by-wolves look, nor Hazel, going by Evvie’s judgmental one, but Nora understood the true perils of raising Potters. And the twins were every bit as Potter as her own were, while Lyra was more Malfoy.

The classical music that had been playing behind the shut studio door shut off, signaling the end of the lesson before their kids’ lesson, and Evvie quickly pulled the magical ball from Violet’s hands before the muggles left the room and spotted it. Parents and adorable tutu-clad little girls— and a few boys— filed out of the studio room a minute or so later. Nora called her children back over to her, and all hers and the twins sat chatting on the floor until it was time for their lesson. Rory, Delilah, Lyra, and Hazel were the only ones officially signed up— Nora, Evvie, and Albus had paid for joint private lessons—but the instructors let the others tag along. Benji and the twins gave it a wholehearted go, but after a minute or so, all three were squirming impatiently and running around the back of the studio. 

“Christ, would you two _sit down_?!” Albus boomed, reaching out to catch Iris and Elliot’s hands in his. “Stop running!”

“You too, Finnigan. Henry, stop!” Nora ordered. Henry had been spinning Benji around wildly. “Put Benji down. Come here.”

Her children obeyed, albeit reluctantly. The twins didn’t at first, but then Albus said something about Ginny, and they scampered over quickly enough. 

“Let’s play a game,” Nora suggested. She was truly too tired for any game of any sort, but she knew Finnigan and the twins especially couldn’t be left to their own devices. “Sit here on the floor, come on.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor and waited until all her kids not currently doing ballet were seated with her. The twins followed suit, and even little Violet joined them, coming over to sit in Nora’s lap. 

“This is called Secret. Here’s how it works: we’ll all close our eyes, Albus will pick somebody in our circle by tapping their head, and that person will turn to the person beside them and whisper a secret. Then that person will whisper that same secret to the person beside them, and that person will whisper to the person beside them, and on and on until it gets back to the person who first started to whisper. If the secret they whisper back to the first whisperer is the same, the person stays in the game. If not, they go stand on the wall with Evvie. You want to try and pick a secret so surprising that the person who hears it thinks it might not be true…that way, you trick them, and they’ll end up changing it to something more believable, and then they’ll be out of the game. You can’t talk or leave the circle, or you lose. Ready?” 

Nora’s own kids knew this game well so they nodded without hesitation. The twins looked a bit confused, but determined, too. 

“Ready,” they chorused. 

“All right…eyes closed! Albus?” 

Nora closed her eyes just long enough for the kids to follow her example, and then she opened her eyes and watched Rory, Delilah, Lyra, and Hazel spin and leap around as Albus chose a child to start the game. He tapped Henry’s head, and Henry thought for a moment before turning to the person beside him— Elliot— and whispering something. Elliot’s eyes opened at once. He turned to face Henry in shock. 

“Really?!” he blurted. “You did that?!”

“Uh oh,” Nora said sadly. “Elliot spoke. That’s against the rules.”

“Give him another chance!” Iris defended. “He was surprised! He’s only five, Nora!” 

“And you’re…?” Albus challenged. 

“Five, too, but I got more patience,” Iris declared. 

“Oh, all right…one more chance. But no talking!” 

“Okay!!” Elliot said seriously. 

It took a few rounds, but the twins got just as involved in the game as Nora and James’ kids always did. After a few mildly worrying secrets were shared— “ _I slept on the roof last summer” (Finnigan) “I ate an entire cake and then blamed it on Padfoot” (Henry) “I keep muggle matches in my socks in case I get lost in the wild” (Iris)_ —Nora had to pass the game over to Albus so she could retreat to the corner and feed Lou. A while later, once Lou was done and the ballet lesson ended and Lyra, Rory, Delilah, and Hazel rejoined their group, Nora wrapped her arms around her daughters’ shoulders and then leaned over to kiss the top of Lyra’s head. 

“Good job, girls,” she praised. 

“I liked that lesson,” Rory said happily. 

“My jeté isn’t as good as Rory’s,” Lyra frowned. 

“Well, Rory’s a good bit older than you are, isn’t she?” Albus reminded Lyra. He lifted her up into his arms and smothered her with kisses while she laughed happily. She wrapped her arms around his neck like she was terrified somebody might take him away. The sight made Nora’s heart swell with affection; she smiled. 

“I did a great job,” Hazel told Evvie. “I perfected open fourth position.”

Evvie leaned in and kissed Hazel’s cheeks. “You did wonderfully. I’m so proud.”

Hazel held onto her hand and beamed. “Will you tell Daddy?” 

“Of course. We’re going there now.” She turned to Nora and reached out, hugging her with one arm while the other held snoozing Violet to her side. Nora hugged her back with one arm as well, her other one holding her child (Lou). “I’ll see you for our Sevens night Wednesday.”

Nora had forgotten, but she worked to keep that surprise off her face. “James and I can’t wait!”

Evvie and Albus shared a cross between a smile and a sneer— as they usually did— and Evvie reached up to straighten his shirt collar, but before she could walk off, Albus caught her hand in his. His affectionate-mocking gave way to something that looked more concerned than anything else. 

“Where are you going? The shop?”

Ben ran his broomstick shop from a cozy little building in Diagon Alley only three doors down from Dean’s art studio, only five from Hugo’s bakery (and Aster’s clothing shop), and eight from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. With all that family around, Nora wasn’t sure why Albus was looking as if Evvie had suggested walking into a lion’s den. 

“Yes, why?” Evvie wondered. 

Albus didn’t let go of her hand. Nora recognized that it was a bit restraining at this point. “The Free Magics are planning another display around this time in Diagon Alley. I don’t think it’s a good idea to take your kids there.”

Evvie scoffed. That tended to be her reaction any time any Potter expressed concerned. She considered the Free Magics a bunch of raving, disorganized fanatics with so much volatility that they were laughable; not even hearing that they were targeting her children seemed to change that much. Nora knew that Ben was worried— because Ben told James everything, and James vented to her about everything in turn— but Evvie was treating the Free Magics as if they were a particularly annoying and rowdy bunch of first years who refused to follow dorm rules. In a way, it made Nora feel better: she respected Evvie and always had, and she valued her opinion, so it made her feel better to think that Evvie really wasn’t worried. But Nora also knew the world, and she knew what had happened to little Dahlia, and she wasn’t vain enough to think tragedy couldn’t strike twice. Albus knew that well, too. 

“I’m going to go with you,” Albus decided, already pulling out his wand. “Just in case. When did Collins say she’d be back?” 

Collins, Nora knew, was the Auror assigned to shadow the Wood girls for their own safety. Nora assumed she’d gone off to take a break of some sort, leaving Evvie, Hazel, and Violet to their own devices. 

“By nightfall. We’re going to be fine, Albus.”

“I’m sure. Because I’m going to accompany you.”

Lyra looked more upset about this than Evvie did. She clung to Albus. “Daddy, I don’t want you to go!”

Albus looked over at Nora. He didn’t even have to say a word. She nodded. She gestured for the twins to join her so she could watch over them while Albus was busy, and then she reached out for Lyra. It made her heart sting a bit when Lyra initially refused to go to her, but after a few whispered words and consoling kisses from Albus, she relented and went to Nora. Nora held her hand as they walked in an opposite direction from Albus and the Woods, feeling horrible, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she felt so terrible about. She only knew that she had a horrible feeling as if she’d made a horrible choice. Maybe it was how pitiful Lyra looked as she walked despondently beside Nora. Maybe it was the resentful way Finnigan glanced at her as they approached King Square Gardens (the very place she hadn’t let him go with his friend earlier). Maybe it was the way Henry was whining about never getting to do anything he wanted to do (like go to Hugo’s Bakery). Maybe it was the stress of James being gone, and their financial struggles, and the fact that Finnigan seemed to outgrow clothing as soon as they could buy it for him. Whatever it was…Nora wanted to turn around and go back to Albus and the Woods. But she didn’t. 

“You know,” she said, pausing as they reached the point they’d need to turn to go to the park. “Maybe we could all go to the park for a bit. That way you can play with Allen, Finn. The fresh air would be nice, too, and we can have ice cream.”  
Buying ice cream for eight children was expensive, but when she saw how excited they all got at that proposition, she felt it was worth it. She and James would figure it out. That’s what they kept telling each other, at least. When they’d begun donating a small portion of their monthly income to the new non-magical campus at Hogwarts (a creation of James’s department’s doing) to try and offset some of the growing expenses, they hadn’t thought it’d make as big an impact on their finances as it had, but then his department received cuts they weren’t expecting— meaning he was taking home less per month than he ordinarily would have— and there was nothing cheap about raising eight children. Nora was certain that if they didn’t have the Free Magics to worry about, they’d be desperately worried about money. Currently, however, money seemed like a smaller worry in comparison to one of their children being kidnapped. 

Finnigan located Allen at their typical playing spot, Nora waited until she was certain they weren’t being watched to conjure a blanket, and then she left Rory watching over the little ones— sans Lou, who was cooing sweetly in her arms, and Lyra, who was attached to her hip like glue— to go buy the ice creams. 

“He’ll be back, Lyra, I promise,” Nora told her. She wrapped her arm around her and kissed her hair. “It’s going to be okay. Just look at Lou! He’s not bothered.”

Lou wasn’t. He smiled hugely and adorably at anyone and everything. Lyra didn’t seem soothed by his optimism. 

“It’s not,” Lyra insisted, and she had tears sparkling in her eyes. “I want my Daddy with me.”

“I know you do. I felt that way when I was little, too,” she told Lyra gently. They stepped into the back of the ice cream queue. “Dean was home with me nearly all the time, but Seamus was running the Kenmore club when I was younger, and he’d go off what felt like all the time…I used to sit on the stairs with my blankets around me just waiting for his fox Patronus to arrive and say he was on his way home…” Nora trailed off, her throat narrowing with nostalgia at the memory. Perhaps she and the kids would go over to her fathers’ house for dinner. She’d like that. 

“He shouldn’t have left you all alone,” Lyra said tearfully, her precious, adorable face alight with tear-soaked indignation. “That’s not right!”

“It couldn’t be helped. Later, though, Uncle Fergus took over for Seamus, and he was home more. And that was nice,” she said, smiling. She hugged Lyra to her side tightly. “Your daddy won’t always be gone so much. I promise. He loves you far too much. That’s why he’s gone. He’s just trying to keep you safe. He hates his job, did you know that?” 

Lyra nodded sagely. “Yes, one time on a Sunday night he cried on Papa’s shoulder because something was happening at work that was bad and he didn’t want to go back in the morning.”

Nora wasn’t surprised to hear that. She worried about her brother. “Well, he wouldn’t be forcing himself to go if it wasn’t to keep you and your cousins and friends safe. He just loves you that much, Lyra.”

It was her turn to order. She faltered. “Oh, sorry, give me one moment. Lyra, chocolate?” 

Lyra lifted up on her tiptoes and peered into the ice cream cart. “Do you have lavender and earl grey?” she asked the ice cream man.

“Er…no.”

Lyra sighed. “Oh, hmm…I guess chocolate, then.”

Nora smiled. She knew Lyra— that much was for certain. 

“I’ll take a chocolate for her, two vanillas, four strawberries, one birthday cake…” Nora remembered that Finnigan was with Allen. She knew he liked chocolate. “And one more chocolate.”

It took every bit of the muggle money she had in her purse, but it was absolutely worth it when she saw how happy the kids were. She sat on the blanket, set Lou beside her so he could have some tummy time and observe the nature around them, and watched as Benji, Delilah, and the twins ran around happily with their ice creams. Lyra was still at Nora’s side, but that didn’t worry her: if she felt better here, that was what mattered. Henry was desperately tagging along after Finnigan and Allen in an attempt to play with them, and luckily, the older boys relented and allowed him to join whatever it is they were playing. And Nora missed Alice and James (and Evra). It hit her forcefully as she sat there and watched the rest of the family have a wonderful afternoon. The happiness felt tainted somewhat by their absence. She wrapped her arm around Lyra and brought her close to her heart, and she understood, and she felt Lyra felt that understanding, too. 

“You worry as much as your uncle Jamie does,” Nora said gently. “And as much as Evra, too.” She leaned over and rested her cheek against Lyra’s hair, her other hand resting securely on little Lou’s back as he peered around them with alert eyes. 

“There’s loads to worry about,” Lyra told Nora seriously. 

“Hm? Like what?” 

“Like _everything_! Like people taking kids! Like Daddy being gone so much like he was before! Like Papa working that much, too! Like Star getting out of the house and running away…like…like…everything!”

“That’s quite a lot,” Nora said fairly. Lyra nodded. “I think we ought to find something fun that you can do when you start to worry. I like to do watercolors when I’m worried. It’s relaxing…it doesn’t even matter if you make a mistake, because the colors bleeding together looks even nicer than if you’d planned it. What could you do?”

Lyra considered that. “I don’t know. I like to read.”

“Oh, you’re a marvelous reader,” Nora gushed. Lyra inflated with pride like she’d hoped she would. “What if we got you some pocket-sized books you could carry around? Then you could read them whenever you feel upset.”

“But when I’m worried and scared my brains are like this,” Lyra said, and then she shook her head violently like she was trying to knock water from her ears. “I can’t pay attention to anything.”

“Hmm…that’s a dilemma, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, it is,” Lyra agreed sadly. 

“Well,” Nora decided. “We’ll have to think on it, won’t we? One thing I do know: there’s something out there to make everybody feel better. We’ve just got to find your thing.”

She leaned her head back against Nora. “I know my thing,” Lyra said sadly. “I like being with my dads.”

Nora almost said w _ell, you won’t always be able to be with them, so we ought to find something a bit more independent_ , but she stopped herself just in time. At such a young age, Lyra _should_ feel like she could always be with her dads. She didn’t need to start thinking about the paralyzing things Nora had begun to think about at her age (about the day she’d inevitably wake up and find herself without her dads). The passage of time was a beautiful thing in the way that it brought her her children, but it was vicious when she thought of the changes it wrought in her and James’s parents. It was unbearable at the best of times to imagine her dads…oh, she didn’t even want to think of it. Maybe Lyra was right. Maybe it was ridiculous and awful for Albus to be gone so much when nobody really knew how long he’d have with his daughter. 

Lou gave a short cry, one that pandered off as soon as Nora listened to him and lifted him back up to cuddle him in her arms. She kissed his feather-soft hair and took a deep breath against the pain soaking her heart. She recognized that she wasn’t only upset about the dark path her thoughts had just gone on— she had many, many things weighing on her shoulders— but she did know she wasn’t in the best mood to cheer anybody up. 

“Why don’t you go play with Benji, Delilah, and the twins?” Nora suggested, pointing over to the slide the four were taking turns sliding down (some more ridiculously than others…Nora considered scolding Elliot for sliding down it upside down and backwards, but for the twins, that was actually fairly mild playground behavior). “They’re having fun. It’ll cheer you up. And look, your ice cream is melting!” 

Lyra had taken a few licks and then set it upright in an empty cup Nora had pulled from the depthless confines for her bag for that purpose. Tiny rivers of chocolate were flooding down the sides of the cone, softening it and giving it a droopy appearance. 

“I want to save it for my papa,” Lyra said. She leaned over Nora’s lap and grabbed her left wrist. Nora waited as she turned her special wristwatch around to stare at the face. It had the time on the edges like normal watches, but it also had another ring around the numbers with the names of locations, so while Lyra was inspecting the time, Nora was staring hard at the different set of hands on the watch that read _Evra, Alice, James_. School, Ministry, Ministry. Just as she’d expected. Nora sighed right as Lyra did. 

“It’s not even time for Papa to come back yet,” Lyra said, her eyes welling with tears again. She flopped across Nora’s lap, her hand still set weakly on her wrist beside the watch. “Papa comes back today when this little hand is here on the six, but it’s only on the three.”

“I’m sorry, Lyra,” Nora comforted, thinking to herself with a bit of concern that Lyra might have a touch of real separation anxiety. “It’ll be time to see him before you know it, though. Three hours is really nothing at all. It’ll go by so fast, you’ll see. And it’ll go by quicker if you’re having fun and playing.”

“I guess,” Lyra said, but she was crying silently as she did, fat tears rolling down her lightly-freckled cheeks. Nora was certainly no stranger to dealing with children. She spent practically every second of her life doing such. But as she stared down at her niece— who was so spoiled and coddled that it was a bit astounding how pitiful she could look— she found she wasn’t really sure what to say. 

“Eat your ice cream,” she settled on, her voice gentle but adamant. “Go see what Iris and Elliot are doing.”

Lyra took the ice cream from Nora and brought it to her mouth. She took a bite of it while she was still sobbing. It might have been a tiny bit comical if Nora didn’t know how upset Lyra really was. Lyra walked off, blubbering into her melty ice cream, and joined the twins, Delilah, and Benji. At first, she did nothing but eat and cry, but then Iris threw herself down on the grass beside Lyra’s feet and somehow made an eclectic assortment of weeds and spring flowers spring up in the brittle grass around her. Nora blinked, mildly impressed, and when Elliot joined them and immediately began making a muggle flower crown for Lyra— clearly to cheer her up— Nora smiled. 

“See, they’re not sociopaths,” she cooed to Lou. “Your uncle Alby should apologize to Lulu for calling them that last Christmas…”

Lou smiled and smiled. Nora leaned down and kissed the corner of his tiny little mouth, encouraged to smile as blissfully as her son was. In many ways, Lou was the opposite of his namesake, whereas Alice and Albus were very similar in nature. All the stories Nora had heard of Lulu as a baby indicated that she had been sweet, certainly, but she had also been equal parts trouble. Lou was the best-behaved baby she had ever met. Her pregnancy with him had caused her enough pain and discomfort that she felt his wonderful, easygoing nature made perfect sense; the world had a way of balancing itself out. She believed that with her entire heart. And it was a gift, she felt, considering he was the last baby she’d ever have. She loved him so much that she hardly ever felt sad about that.

With Lyra now giggling, her tears drying against her rose-stained cheeks, her hair covered with flowers that ought not to have been there, Nora felt calmer. Soon, the rest of the kids joined in the flower-making activity, even Finnigan and his friend, Allen, who usually spent their days riding various muggle toys down the pavement shrieking. Sometimes Nora thought Finnigan considered the day a bust if he didn’t come home with at least three bruises and a skinned knee. 

She was so content to enjoy the unusually tepid breeze, cuddle Lou, and watch her children and nieces (and nephew) playing that she hardly heard the pop! of apparition. She did hear the arguing, though. 

“I don’t understand why you’re like this,” Lily snapped, her voice bursting with irritation. Nora twisted and looked behind her to spot Lily and her husband approaching their gathering. Lily’s cheeks were flushed a splotchy strawberry in her irritation. Nora knew that look. She felt a bit bad for Caden, whose expression was mild and demeanor calm. “You need to be more…assertive! Aggressive! You can’t just let people fuck you over and then just hold the fucking door open for them! Punch a bitch, God damn it!” 

Nora’s eyebrows rose in surprise. The hostility was a bit unexpected. When her sister and brother joined her, she considered asking them if everything was okay, but somehow she knew they wouldn’t tell her the truth. 

“Hello,” she greeted instead. 

“Hi,” Caden smiled. He sat down beside her and Lou. “I don’t know how you do it. Look at them.” 

He was peering at Nora and James’s kids, his and Lily’s, and Lyra and Allen. They were sitting in a circle laughing and talking together as they knotted and wove the flowers into crowns, bracelets, neckties…a bit of everything, really. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Nora admitted. “I gave them ice cream, set them loose, and Iris turned that patch of grass into a garden, and now they’re doing that.” She glanced up at Lily, who was still standing stiffly beside them, her arms crossed and her foot tapping with irritation against the grass. “Hello, Lily.”

“Hi.”

“She’s angry with me,” Caden explained needlessly. “It’s not personal. Against you, I mean. It’s not even really personal against me, actually.”

“It is,” Lily muttered darkly, her arms still crossed tightly. 

“Oh, I know she’s not angry with me,” Nora assured him. “How’d you know I was here?” 

“We sent a Patronus to Albus asking him where he was— his house was empty— and he said we could get the twins from you. You weren’t home, but we figured you might be here once we checked the Den and found it empty, too. Our next guess was the muggle art shop, but I doubted you’d want to bring the twins there.”

Nora shuddered at the thought. “Certainly not if I could help it.”

“Fair,” Caden laughed. 

“And you know what’s not fair?” Lily exploded. “Letting somebody cast you away like you’re nothing when you’re _not,_ you’re _not nothing_ , and then just letting them stroll right back into your life like nothing ever happened and _letting them hug you and buying them a birthday gift!”_

“Er…” Nora said, confused. She looked curiously at Caden, her mind trying to piece together what Lily was talking about. “Are you talking to your grandparents again, Caden?” Truly, she’d thought they’d died, but maybe not. 

“Sort of,” he dismissed smoothly. He reached up and grabbed Lily’s hand, tugging firmly on it until she folded her legs and collapsed down beside him. She was still pouting and glaring, but she scooted closer to him as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Lily’s not a fan of how I’m handling the situation.”

It seemed to burst from Nora’s sister’s lips again. She leaned over Caden’s lap and stared furiously at Nora. “He lets people treat him like shit!” 

Nora looked between the two a bit hesitantly. “I have a hard time believing that,” she admitted. She could only think of a handful of times she’d seen Caden lose his temper in the many, many years she’d known him— once during the end of her seventh year when somebody on the Slytherin Quidditch team made an inappropriate comment about Aster Boot, once when all the Potter siblings (and significant others) had been out at a pub on holiday and somebody had called Ginny something decidedly not-nice, and once during a New Zealand visit when one of the new trainee dragon keepers had broken protocol and let a reporter onto the sanctuary lands (which nearly led to the man being murdered by territorial dragons right in front of the twins). But despite the far and few times she’d seen him get genuinely furious, he didn’t put up with undue hostility, either. He could walk away from people and cut them off with an ease Nora had always partially admired; she had a difficult time turning people away. 

“She’s not treating me like shit,” Caden countered. 

“But before she—”

“Before is before. Shall you and I judge each other on everything we’ve done before?” 

Lily parted her lips as if to fire something back at that, but then she stopped. She was saved from having to answer by the kids. 

“Mummy!!” 

“Daddy!!” 

“Lulu!!” Finnigan and Lyra chorused. 

“Caden!” Henry and Delilah said happily. 

“You’ve been spotted,” Nora said cheerfully. “Kiss and make-up before they come over here. Go on. Pucker up!”

Lily looked like she might’ve wanted to shoot Nora a rude hand gesture— and now would certainly be the time if she was so inclined; James was away— but Caden leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth before she could. 

“That’s not even a real make-up kiss; there was no tongue,” Lily muttered, but Elliot threw himself into her lap before she could mutter anything else. He had about four different flower crowns on; Lily sneezed as he nuzzled his cheek against her sternum and gripped her lovingly. 

“I missed you, Mummy, and I put lilies in all my crowns.”

“I certainly see that,” Lily responded, but Nora noticed her voice was loads softer than it’d been before, and her expression was gentle. It was interesting to watch the way the twins hugged each respective parent for the exact same amount of time and then, without saying a word to each other or even looking towards one another, they stood at the same moment and switched, so that Elliot was cuddling in Caden’s arms, and Iris was hugging Lily. 

“I can see you two had strawberry—” 

Caden’s comment was interrupted by an intermingled cry of _“Daddy!!”_

Nora turned and peered in the direction of the kids’ shouts. She grinned at the sight of her husband, walking briskly towards her, Alice sitting atop his shoulders. She stood automatically, her heart swelling and her cheeks already sore from a huge smile, but that smile faded a bit as James neared. She hadn’t noticed his bleak expression from afar. 

Her children weren’t quite as observant. They stormed over to James, wrapping their arms around him and hanging all over him and chattering nonstop, but Nora’s heart was inching downwards by the second. Something was very wrong. She knew James better than she knew anything else in the entire world. Something wasn’t right. 

She passed Lou to Lily quickly. 

“What’s wrong?” Caden asked quietly. 

“I don’t know,” Nora answered tersely. She hurried over to where James was, and when his lips pressed into a tight, trembling line, she upped it to a sprint. James reached out for her as soon as she reached him. She leaned into his embrace and felt Alice grab happily at her hair from her spot on James’s shoulders. Whatever was wrong didn’t have to do with Alice, and that was a relief, but what was making Jamie tremble like this?

“It’s my brother,” Jamie breathed, his face pressed against Nora’s shoulder as he gripped her, and Nora automatically turned and looked back at Lyra, who was giggling with Rory, her face brightened by the dozens of vibrant flowers crowning her hair. For a moment, all Nora could do was think those words over and over and stare. She didn’t want to draw attention to them— didn’t want Lyra to hear a word— so she was very careful to keep her face buried in James’s chest and her voice soft. 

“What's happened?” 

He was equally quiet. “I’m not entirely sure. I just know he’s been injured and he’s at St. Mungo’s. Scorpius sent me a hysterical Patronus asking us to watch over Lyra for right now…it must be bad if she can’t go to Mungo’s to see him.”

Nora took a moment sheltered in James’s arms to inhale shakily. She held it for as long as she could, told herself _everything finds its balance,_ and then she exhaled. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she said after that, her hand sliding up to brush the hair at the nape of James’s neck. “We’ll take her home and we won’t say a word about it yet.” 

“What about my sister?” 

Nora never got the chance to respond: Lyra came over to great James, too, and the two of them quickly parted and stopped talking about it. But they couldn’t stop thinking about it. They were quiet the entire walk home— despite Finnigan’s best efforts to get everybody talking, arguing, singing, whatever— and they’d been obvious enough to have Lily worried by the time they arrived back to Grimmauld Place. 

“Get out,” she told the children, a bit blunter than Nora would have been. “Go on, shoo, go outside and play, go on. That includes you, Finnigan.”

“I’m not a kid!” 

“You’re ten years old. Get out of here. Rory went, didn’t she? Go follow her example…Iris, I see you hiding underneath that table!”

“I’m not,” Iris whispered. 

“Goodbye!” 

With grumbles and sour looks, all the children reluctantly listened, stepping out into the fenced-in garden. As soon as they were gone, Lily rounded on James. 

“What the fuck happened?” 

“Al is hurt,” James told her at once. “That’s all I really know.”

Lily looked between James and Nora quickly. “Hurt? Like…seriously hurt? Or—”

“Seriously hurt. He’s at St. Mungo’s. Scorpius was…he sounded really upset. He asked me to keep Lyra here,” James shared, his voice faint. 

Lily glanced up at Caden like he’d have some answers, but of course he didn’t know any more about it than they did. He observed James with a grim expression. 

“If he needs you to keep Lyra rather than Ginny and Harry, they must be there too, which means it must be serious,” he realized. 

Nora was certain they were all thinking about Albus’s bleeding condition, courtesy of the horrible curse he’d suffered during Nora and James’s seventh year. It wouldn’t take much to injure him horrifically. That was the main reason Ginny despised his profession as much as she did. 

“He went with Evvie,” Nora voiced, realizing that nobody but her might know that since she was the only one of them who’d been around at the time. She met James’s wide brown eyes. “We were…we were at the girls’ ballet lesson, and afterwards, Evvie and her girls were going to Ben’s shop, but the Auror assigned to watch over them was gone or something, I don’t know where, and Albus didn’t want them going alone so he went with them and left Lyra with me.”

James frowned deeply. “The Free Magics were rumored to be active in Diagon Alley this afternoon.”

“Yeah, that’s what Albus said,” Nora agreed. Her eyes were burning as she thought of it. She’d had a horrible feeling. She’d felt it the entire walk away from him. Why didn’t she listen to it? 

James was probably more upset than she was, but as her eyes blurred with tears, he reached out and pulled her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her securely and kissed her cheek. Nora felt haunted. 

“He’ll be okay then,” James affirmed, but despite his effort to sound cheerful and steady, he only sounded terrified. “Evvie knows about his bleeding condition. So if he had his vial like he’s supposed to, I’m sure he’s fine.”

“If he had his vial,” Lily said quietly. Nora looked over at her. She had her arms clasped and was anxiously rubbing over the floral tattoos covering her biceps as if she were cold. “He doesn’t always have it. He left it the other day. He and Caden went to the pub and he scratched his arm on the edge of something and I had to apparate there and bring it to him.”

“He’s supposed to have it all the time!” James said angrily. 

“Well I know that, you idiot!” Lily snapped back. “But he was really flustered before he took Lyra and the twins to ballet— he was running late and Lyra was throwing a fit about the leotard she had to wear because she wanted her other one— and who knows if he had it with him? Who knows if he remembered to grab it?”

“He had to,” Nora said softly, her eyes burning once more. “He had to have grabbed it.”

Lily went to respond and came up short. She pursed her lips without saying anything. She wrung her hands and turned to look up at Caden again. Nora wondered what she was waiting for him to say. 

“Nora…” Jamie said, trailing off painfully, and he didn’t have to say anything else. 

“Go,” she told him. “Go make sure he’s okay.”

“But—”

“He’s your brother,” Nora interrupted firmly. 

But he was her brother, too. She loved Albus so much she felt as if he’d been her little brother her entire life. She’d never forgotten— would never forget— that morning they shared in her seventh year before Al went to testify against Halloran Carrow when she was early on with Evra. She had been at her lowest at that time in her life. She was terrified, ill all the time, and so young— too young. Too young to be pregnant. Too young to be dealing with the things she was. She had felt so terrified and pained that morning like somebody had scooped something out of the middle of her chest, and she probably would have lost it. But then Albus was there, just as nervous and nauseated as she was, and they sat together in the dim lamplight while everybody else slept, and he’d said ‘ _Want to trade problems?’._ She’d laughed for the first time in what felt like a long while. Albus could be prickly and snippy, but he was as fiercely protective as Jamie and Lily, and Nora had always felt it was what made the Potter extraordinary. 

Jamie was her Jamie. She wasn’t surprised when he replied: “But he’s yours, too.”

“He is,” she agreed. “But I’ll stay here with Lyra. That’s what he’d want me to do. He’d be more worried about her than himself, I know he would.” 

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Lily said suddenly, sharply. “He’s not dead. He’s not. He’s just injured, but he’s going to be all right.”

“Of course he is,” James said, but it sounded hollow. “I’m going to St. Mungo’s, then, if you’re sure, Nora.”

“I’m sure,” she said firmly. “You should be with him. You should, too, Lily.”

“I am,” Lily said definitely. She looked back up at Caden with that same look that Nora couldn’t place, like she was searching for something, or waiting for something. “You’ll watch the twins and help with Lyra?” 

“Absolutely,” Caden said. He leaned down and he kissed her with such unexpected softness that James and Nora shared an impressed look. And then, once they parted, he punched her shoulder lightly. “Well, fuck off, then.”

Lily relaxed, and when she punched him right back, Nora realized that’s what she’d been waiting for. Maybe that’s what helped her feel a sense of normalcy, of stability. She certainly seemed more confident and sure as she and James headed to the garden to apparate to St. Mungo’s. 

“What’s the plan?” Caden asked as soon as they were alone. 

“No plan,” Nora admitted. 

“No plan? Don’t Gryffindors always have plans?” 

She blinked, and when she saw Rory approaching the house— Lou in her arms as he often was— she realized she did have one. 

“Plan A: pretend like nothing happened, keep it a secret from Lyra, and tell them Lily and James went to the Ministry for important Ministry stuff.”

“Got it,” he said, right before Rory stepped in the room. 

“Mummy, Lou smells,” Rory greeted. “And Finnigan is spinning Alice around by her hands like you told him not to, and Iris and Elliot are on the roof with Henry, and Padfoot peed on the patio chair, and…and…well, that’s all I can think of, Lyra and Delilah are playing nicely, but maybe you and Daddy should get out there.” She looked around Nora and Caden. “Where is Daddy?” 

“He went back to work,” Nora explained. She stepped over to the sink, flung the window open above it, and yelled out: “FINNIGAN, YOU PUT YOUR SISTER DOWN RIGHT NOW!” 

Alice’s wild giggles told Nora she had no complaints about being spun around like a bit of fabric, but she couldn’t risk her getting hurt. 

“BUT SHE LOVES IT!” 

“BUT I DON’T CARE— PUT HER DOWN!” 

When Nora turned back around to face Rory, she was thankful that it wasn’t in Rory’s nature to have a Lyra-esque breakdown, but she still didn’t look too happy about it all, either. 

“But he just got back.”

“I know, darling,” Nora said consolingly. “Something came up. We’ve talked about how this is a busy time, right?” 

Rory pulled her fingers through her light hair unhappily. “I wish it would stop. Everybody’s always so busy. Roxanne was supposed to take Finn and I to dinner last night, but she never did.”

“I know,” Nora repeated. “She’s busy, too. It won’t always be this way.”

“Every parent is telling every kid that but no parent knows that’s true,” Rory commented, and without waiting for anyone to respond, she turned and walked back outside. Nora blinked. 

“I…you know, she’s not wrong.”

“No,” Caden agreed. He took a step towards the kitchen door and Nora followed, wordlessly agreeing that they needed to go out there and get Henry and the twins off the roof, among many other things. “But that’s what adults always told us, isn’t it?” 

“I suppose they did,” Nora realized. “Sometimes they were right. Most of the time they were right.”

“All we can hope is that ‘most of the time’ we’re right, too— IRIS ADELAIDE! PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?!”

Nora hadn’t ever heard him yell quite that loudly, and granted, they would have to speak at a volume to be heard by the kids on the roof anyway, but when she stepped back from the house and squinted up towards the roof, she spotted Iris lounged nearly naked on the warm tiles. Nora sighed. 

“I’M SUNBATHING!” 

“GET DOWN!” 

“HENRY,” Nora yelled. He was a few feet away, balancing near the gutter and peering out towards London. “YOU TOO, GET OFF THE ROOF! STOP MAKING US YELL, MERLIN!” 

They wanted them off the roof, but actually watching them climb down was nerve-racking. Nora hovered nervously near the alcove they were using to climb back down, and Caden had his wand out, presumably ready to cast a cushioning spell should any of them slip. But all three made it back down as easily as they’d made it up. 

“Why can’t we get on the roof?” Elliot whined. “It’s cool up there.”

“It’s not safe,” Caden explained. He took Iris’s dress from her hands and shook it out. He lifted it over her head and tugged it back on her. “And the roof isn’t a good place to sunbathe. The beach is.”

Iris squirmed away from him. “I don’t want to wear my dress, it’s itchy! My body! I decide! My body!” 

Caden and Nora exchanged a look. 

“It is, that’s true, but the roof where random muggle people can see you is not the place to sunbathe, especially without a swimming costume. Some parts are private.”

“WELL I’VE GOT MY KNICKERS ON!”

“Why are you screaming, Iris? I’m right here and I’m listening.” 

“I DON’T--know. I want to wear some of Benji’s clothes. Look, Daddy, look,” she said earnestly, taking her dress back from him and flipping it inside out. There were quite a number of tags on the inside; it was certainly a muggle dress. Aster specialty made all the twins’ clothing and didn’t include any itchy tags or seams. 

Caden ran his palm over the tags. “They are a bit itchy,” he said fairly. “But it’s still not appropriate to just take your clothes off wherever you like, okay?” 

“But _why_?” 

“Because people don’t do that. Because it’s private. Because there are bad people out there.” 

“Why do bad people care what I’m wearing?” Iris pressed, baffled. 

Nora grimaced. It was a tricky conversation. She glanced at Caden to see if he wanted help, but Elliot interjected before he could respond. 

“Because they’ll get you when you don’t have clothes with pockets ‘cause they know you don’t have no wand or knife or fire starter or anything!!” cried Elliot. 

Iris’s eyes widened. “Then they know they can get you! Right, Daddy? Is that why?!” 

Iris turned to look up at Caden, her eyes wide and searching. She looked so angelic and adorable that even Nora found herself hoping he’d just go with it. He paused for a long moment, and then said: 

“Yes. That’s exactly why. Try to always wear clothes with pockets.”

“I _knew it!_ ” Elliot cried, pumping his fist in the air. 

“BENJI, BENJI, CAN I BORROW CLOTHES WITH POCKETS?!” Iris cried, running over to stop Benji’s swing. 

“Is it okay for her to borrow some clothes?” Caden asked Nora. “I could make her put her dress back on, but I’d rather save all your windows from bursting. That’s what happened the last time she had a strop.”

“No, don’t make her wear it again, it’s itchy,” Nora defended Iris. “That’s far too many tags. Sometimes I think muggles hate comfort. Delilah,” Nora said, reaching out and catching her daughter by her shoulders as she approached the patio, “can you walk Iris up to Benji’s room and help her find something to wear?” 

Delilah sighed for a long while. “I wanted to get some pumpkin juice…”

“I’ll have a glass waiting for you when you come back down.” She spied Lou chewing incessantly on his hands from his place in the infant swing Rory was pushing him in. “I’ve got to feed Lou, anyway. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Okay,” Delilah decided. 

Nora leaned down and kissed her nose. “Thank you, love.”

“You’re welcome, Mummy.”

She fed Lou, Iris found less itchy clothing, and by the time the kids moved onto their next self-managed activity— finger painting— it was nearing dinner, and they’d heard nothing from Jamie, or Lily, or the Potter parents. Their periodic Patronuses had gone unanswered, even one she’d sent to Evvie earlier hoping Evvie had seen something. Nora’s stomach was twisted in knots. 

“Well,” she said quietly, allowing herself a moment of uncertainty now that the kids were out of eyesight. She faced her brother. “I suppose we feed them dinner and put them to bed.” 

Caden was having his moment of uncertainty, too. He ran his fingers anxiously through his hair. “Why haven’t we heard anything?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing to tell.”

She peered off through the open doorway into the dining room where the kids were making a mess of finger-painting, and Caden closed his eyes and took a deep, grounding breath, and Nora had no way to know what Caden was thinking of, but she was thinking about her brother. She thought often of how much help he’d been the first few weeks of Evra’s life. He’d carried Evra through the Hogwarts corridors like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing in the world, even though he’d been a sixteen-year-old boy, and Nora was sure there were plenty of other things he could have been doing. He had been an amazing uncle from the start, and now he was an amazing dad, and she had put herself through some of the most difficult phases of her life to help make him a father, and now…

What if things weren’t okay?

What if she was right? What if they hadn’t heard anything because there was nothing to tell because nothing had changed because nothing would change ever again, because—

No. But, no. Because everything found a balance. And losing Albus wouldn’t balance a thing. Losing Albus would tilt the world to a point that equilibrium could never be recovered. 

“It’s not like them to be this quiet,” Caden said softly, and at first, she thought he meant the children because they _were_ being particularly subdued. But it only took one glance at his eyes to understand. “Especially Lily. I haven’t heard anything from her. That isn’t like her.” 

Nora had known Lily long before Caden had, and she had to agree with that.

“One of us should go to St. Mungo’s,” she decided. 

“And leave the other with all these kids?” 

“It’s not that many,” Nora said. 

“With the twins it is.”

“I can get my dads to come over.” She desperately wanted them because she was frightened, but she hadn’t said a word to them yet. She didn’t want to worry them when she didn’t even have any answers to give. 

“I wonder if Draco knows,” Caden murmured. 

Nora grimaced. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s there. Maybe that’s why Scorpius wanted me to watch Lyra and not him.”

“It’s all so fucked,” Caden said, his voice still soft to keep the kids from eavesdropping. “If what we think happened happened…if those Free Magics hurt Albus trying to get to Hazel or Violet…how does any of that get them— the Free Magics— any closer to having magical children? It’s only getting them closer to a prison cell.” 

“I don’t know. I think they’re desperate and mad,” Nora admitted. 

“All they’re doing is hurting people and hurting their own chances of ever having a family.”

“I know that. And they probably know that a bit, too. But…think about your own babies. Imagine something threatening them, something harming them in some way…these people see the lack of magical ability as an extreme handicap. They’re acting out of pure, mindless instinct. Haven’t you ever felt like that before? Something threatened your kids or hurt your kids and you just…snapped?” 

It had happened to her before, and she was certain it would happen again. She didn’t like to think about it. 

“Yeah,” he admitted, his voice gruffer than it’d been before. “I get that.”

Nora voiced something she hadn’t yet voiced, growing more and more certain of it the longer she let the thought ferment. “I think they’re extremely dangerous. The Aurors are writing them off because of how disorganized and impulsive they are, but I think that makes them even worse.”

The sound of bright, hysterical laughter drew their attention back to the dining room. Nora smiled despite it all. At least the children weren’t wracked with worry and dread. It was a small blessing, one that might end up being short-lived. 

“I suppose one of us should—” she stopped, her eyes catching something bright and glowing from the corner of the kitchen. She turned and felt a strange tangle of relief and trepidation as the lion stalked towards them. “Fleamont,” she blurted. 

The Patronus stopped in front of them. 

“Al’s still critical,” Lily’s voice said. “As far as we know, somebody tried to take one of Ben’s kids, and Al stopped them, but somebody else stunned him from behind and he fell through a window. He’s been hemorrhaging on and off…there’s so much damage internally and externally…” Lily’s voice trailed off, and the lion fell silent, but it didn’t disappear. It was almost as if Lily had been interrupted as she’d recited her message. After a long pause, she continued, and her voice was shaky this time. “Draco’s here. He wants to collect Lyra in the morning, but he doesn’t want to upset her by picking her up in the middle of the night— last I heard from Scorpius, he doesn’t want her to know— Caden, I’m sorry for earlier, for getting so ill with you.”

Nora had no idea why Lily was apologizing to Caden for that right now, but when she glanced over at Caden, he didn't look confused by the topic change at all; he must've understood where her head was at. 

“I’ve got to go— they’re going to try something different and Mum’s upset— I’ll be back sometime tonight, there’s not much I can do here— Nora, Jamie says he loves you and he’ll be back soon, too. Okay, I’m going. I think that’s all, but I probably forgot something. Kiss the twins for me— or scold them, depending on how they’re acting. Bye.”

The Patronus faded, leaving Caden and Nora in near silence (save the giggles and chatter of the children from the next room). Nora took a few steps back and leaned against the counter. She reached up and hid her face in her hands for a moment, and once her eyes met darkness, she took a deep breath and processed.

“Who stuns somebody from behind?” Caden demanded, his voice low and brimming with anger. 

“Somebody who tries to kidnap little children,” Nora said, her irritated voice a bit muffled from behind her hands. 

“Fair enough,” Caden agreed quietly. 

Nora felt a desperate, insatiable urge to help, to fix whatever had happened, to go there and make sure they were all okay— particularly James— but that wasn’t in her power right now. Only one thing really was: keeping this a secret from Lyra, keeping her happy, keeping her safe. Sometimes the most powerful thing was the quietest thing. She’d known that all her life. 

* * *

Her heart wanted to let the kids stay up late, feed them massive amounts of sugar, and indulge their requests for ‘one more!!’ game of Exploding Snap, but she knew that would only make matters worse. She needed to pretend like everything was as normal as possible, but that was difficult when things were blatantly not usual. 

“But where are my daddy and my papa?” Lyra persisted. She turned her head to peer again at the dark windows, causing her hair to slip from Nora’s grasps. 

“Face forward, love,” Nora reminded her patiently. 

Lyra obeyed and Nora resumed plaiting her wet hair, but Lyra hadn’t forgotten her question. 

“It’s late and I should be in my bed with my dads and my ten books.”  
Plaiting Lyra’s hair was quick work; Nora fastened a tie at the end of her strawberry blond locks and then moved onto the next child sitting at the table waiting patiently (Delilah). Delilah was reading quietly as Nora began the same routine they did every single night. Alice had gone first— her hair was combed and neatly plaited— and she was dozing lightly on Nora’s lap. She was so used to maneuvering around the child leaning against her chest that it didn’t hinder her at all as she carefully spritzed conditioning mist on Delilah’s hair, careful not to let the cool spray touch Delilah’s neck or ears (she hated that). The calming scent of lavender and lime washed over them; Nora associated it so strongly with bedtime that she felt herself grow a bit sleepy automatically, and judging by the huge yawn Delilah gave a moment later, she did, too. 

But this wasn’t _Lyra’s_ bedtime routine, and she wasn’t feeling calmed. 

“I want to go home,” she repeated. 

“Your dad got a bit held up at work,” Nora lied softly. It hurt her heart to do so, but telling Lyra the truth when she couldn’t even tell her if her dad was okay was not fair and she couldn’t do it. “And your papa went to help him. We’re going to have a pajama party. The twins are staying, too! It’s all _very_ exciting!”

She enthused her voice with as much glee as she could muster. It probably helped that they could faintly hear Finnigan, Henry, Benji, and the twins laughing and running around upstairs. 

“You can sleep in my room, Lyra,” Rory told Lyra brightly. “I have a tent and fairy lights over my bed!”

Lyra wasn’t quite won over. She looked on as Nora’s fingers pulled gently and carefully through Delilah’s ringlets. 

“But Star needs her dinner,” Lyra complained. “I want to go home to my home.”

“Iset fed her,” Nora lied. In reality, she’d forgotten about Lyra’s kitten. She’d have to figure that out once the kids were in bed. It was possible that Scorpius arranged something, but it was equally possible that the kitten had been the last thing on his mind with his husband critically injured. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to stay here with me and your cousins, and we’re going to have a nice night, and you’ll see them soon.”

She was careful not to promise tomorrow because, in all honesty, she didn’t know if Lyra would see them tomorrow. 

Lyra was quiet as Nora wrapped Delilah’s hair. She was quiet as Nora moved onto Rory, combing through her long hair delicately with a fine-toothed comb and then twisting it up into a bun, not unlike the one Nora wore herself nearly every day. Rory was really getting old enough to comb her own hair before bed— Finnigan had stopped letting Nora comb through his a year ago— but Nora was going to keep up the routine for as long as Rory would let her. It was as important to her own bedtime routine as Lyra’s ten books were to her. It had been difficult for her when Evra had gone off to school— she still caught herself turning to the seat Evra sat in at the table as if to prepare her for bed, too— and Finnigan’s insistence that he could ‘comb his own hair’ had made it worse. It was difficult to admit they were growing up. 

“I suppose Iris wasn’t interested in having her hair combed or plaited,” Nora commented, staring at the seat Iris had very briefly occupied before getting ‘bored’ and going upstairs with the boys. Nora always dealt with the boys’ hair first as it took less time, and Iris had only been able to sit patiently for Benji’s and Henry’s to be combed before she squirmed from the chair and went back upstairs to play. 

“She’s a baby about people touching her hair,” Lyra told Nora matter-of-factly. “She lets Lulu touch it, and Cade, and sometimes my daddy, but Harry tried to brush her hair last week and she screamed a very impolite word.”

“A very impolite word?” Nora repeated, masking her amusement. “Iris?! Never!” 

Lyra giggled. It was obvious growing up with Albus for a father kept her sarcasm skills sharp. 

“All right,” Nora declared, pushing the hair items back into the basket they’d come out of with a wave of her wand, “upstairs we go.”

She carried Alice upstairs, set her in her and James’s bed where she slept, peeked on Lou in the bedside cot (he was still sleeping peacefully), and then she met up with the rest of the kids by following the sound of their chatters. She wasn’t at all surprised to find the twins in the process of building a massive fort above Benji’s bed, but she was surprised to see Caden and Finnigan helping. Henry and Benji were stretched out atop Benji’s bed, looking like kings at rest as they watched the others construct the fort around them, and the girls hurried over with excited gasps.  
“

It’s so cool, Uncle Caden!” Delilah exclaimed happily. She threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. She had always had a soft spot for him, and probably vice verse, Nora thought. 

“Is this _your_ bedtime routine?” Nora asked curiously, amused despite how late it was and how tired (and worried) she was. In contrast to her and Jamie’s routine with the kids— hair-time, followed by snuggles and quiet storytime, followed by usually at least three kids cuddling up in their bed to sleep— it was much more…energetic. Building a fort was something Jamie and Nora saved for rainy days in the house with all the kids; it certainly wasn’t a pre-bedtime activity. 

“Yeah, most nights,” he admitted. He summoned a hook and a length of clothesline from Merlin knows where and draped a second quilt above the first, creating an interesting multi-story look to the fort that made the kids gasp in wonder. 

“Can I sleep in here?!” Delilah begged Nora. 

“Me too!” 

“I want to, too!” 

“I wanted to the very first of all!”

Caden grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…I should have.” He turned to his kids. “We need to take it down. It’s not fair because there are more kids than can fit beneath it.”

Iris and Elliot were leaning tiredly against his sides now, their eyelids heavy with exhaustion as if their dad had been singing lullabies to them rather than helping them construct a tent. 

“Nooooo…” Iris protested pitifully. 

“But it’s our bed,” Elliot complained and then yawned. 

“I know. But it’s not fair,” he said again. “Everybody will want to sleep in it, but poor Benji will get smushed if everybody is in his bed.”

“I don’t want to be smushed, but I do want to keep this fort,” Benji said seriously. 

Nora yawned right after Lyra gave a massive yawn to her left. 

“There will be plenty of time for forts and such in the morning, I promise,” she told her kids. “C’mon, off to bed you pop. Your own beds.”

“But _Mummy_ …”

She patted Finnigan’s shoulder gently, urging him towards the doorway. 

“No buts. It’s very late, I’m very tired, and we’ve had a long day.” She watched Benji stare sadly at his uncle as he quickly dismantled the fort. She leaned over and kissed his little cheek. “I love you, Benji. I’ll help you make a fort tomorrow.”

He turned and nuzzled his nose against hers like he’d done every night since he was first old enough to. He looped his arms around her neck and hugged her tight afterwards. 

“‘Night, Mummy,” he said sweetly. 

She kissed him again. There was a brief squabble between Iris and Elliot as they tried to decide where they were sleeping— Iris wanted to sleep in the guest room with their dad, Elliot wanted to sleep with Benji, but apparently separating for the night never occurred to the twins— but they finally made a choice and walked out of Benji’s room hand-in-hand with Caden. Nora leaned down and pressed huge kisses to their cheeks before they went into the guest room to be tucked up into bed. 

“Goodnight,” she told them. They giggled and wiped at their cheeks before giving Nora a joint hug. 

“You have the _goodest_ night,” Iris told her warmly.

“I love you a whole damn lot,” Elliot said happily. “You’re the best auntie.”

“I’m your only auntie, but I’ll take it,” she laughed. 

She had to re-explain to all her kids that James was working and wouldn’t be back ’til late that night, but they accepted it readily enough: it wasn’t the first time that’d happened and it wouldn’t be the last. After they brushed their teeth, she went to Delilah’s room and cuddled with her and sang the song Jamie had made up for her when she was a baby ’til she fell asleep, she went to Henry’s room and read a book with him on caterpillars, she went to Rory’s room and stroked her hair ’til Rory was drifting off, and then she stopped outside Finnigan’s doorway. He was her last stop of the night. 

“‘Night, Finn,” she called into his room. “I love you.”

“Goodnight, Mum,” he said back. “Love you.”

She smiled at him and edged out of sight, but she waited for a moment or two in the corridor. As he did every night, he waited a couple of seconds, and then he called: “Mum?” 

Nora stepped back into the doorway. “Yes?” 

He peered at her from his bed, his eyes wide and his face incredibly young. He wanted to grow up so quickly, but he was really still her little boy, and that was evident in his searching eyes and the dozens of plush animals still piled on his bed. 

“I’ve decided I’m still little enough for a goodnight kiss,” he said— as he did every night. 

“Oh, good,” Nora said happily, stepping into his bedroom. “I was worried you’d grown up too much today.”

He moved a few of his plush cows to the other side of the bed so his mum could perch on the edge. She smoothed his curls back from his forehead, leaned down, and kissed just above his brow. 

“Goodnight again,” she said. 

He reached out and hugged her waist briefly. Her heart melted as it did every single time he hugged her. “Goodnight.”

That left her Lyra. Nora walked out to find her sitting sadly on the steps. She’d gone initially to rest in Rory’s room, but Nora had known that wouldn’t last. Nora walked over and sank down to sit beside her niece. Lyra leaned wordlessly against her side. 

“I’m sad,” Lyra murmured. 

Nora hugged her to her side. “I’ll be sad with you.”

Lyra sighed heavily. It made Nora feel an intense swell of sadness; she wanted so terribly to protect Lyra— had wanted that from the very first time she’d felt her move—but there was nothing she could do to protect her completely from life. If she could have made it possible for Lyra to be happy every moment of every day, she would have made it so. And if it were possible to do, Albus and Scorpius would have already done it. 

“What shall we do with you, hm?” Nora asked gingerly. 

Lyra thought about that for a minute or so, her head still leaning against Nora’s arm. “I want Benji,” she decided. 

Nora could’ve guessed that much. They’d been snoozing side-by-side since they were newborns; he probably represented some of the same security for Lyra that the twins found in each other. 

“Let’s go tuck you up, then,” Nora said. She stood, and when Lyra reached out for her, she hoisted her up and perched her on her hip. Lyra rested her cheek sadly and tiredly against her shoulder as they walked. It broke her heart. She knew Lyra was being particularly sensitive and dramatic; she’d always been good at that, almost as good as Elliot was at it, which was, in Nora’s opinion, the main reason the two often butted heads. But she had to wonder, too, if a part of Lyra somehow sensed that her dad wasn’t all right.

* * *

  
Nora helped Lyra ready for bed, fastened the two buttons on the back of her borrowed nightie, and then walked her into Benji’s dim room. Benji stirred slightly as they stepped in. 

“Benji, may I sleep in here?” Lyra whispered, her voice polite despite how stressed she was.

Benji smiled sweetly and patted the side of his double bed. He pushed one of his favorite plush toys over to Lyra. She climbed up on the bed, took the stuffed emperor penguin she’d been offered, and turned on her side to cuddle it. Nora kissed her hair. 

“Goodnight, Lyra. I’ll see you in the morning. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said back automatically. “Will you tell my dads I miss them?”

“Absolutely,” Nora said firmly and quickly, knowing that if Lyra was going to have an emotional breakdown, now would probably be the time it would happen. Sure enough, as she thought about her dads, her green eyes swelled with tears. 

“I want my papa,” she breathed, pained. 

“Oh, I know, darling,” Nora sighed. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Lyra’s hair softly. “I’m so sorry.”

Lyra sniffled pathetically into the emperor penguin. Benji— still half asleep— reached out and patted her shoulder blindly. 

“S’okay, daddies come back,” he mumbled. 

Nora wanted to go downstairs and try to contact Jamie to see how Albus was, but Lyra was holding her hand now, and she knew leaving wouldn’t be an option ’til she was asleep. Nora stretched out on the edge of the bed and held Lyra’s hand in hers as Lyra did her best to be brave and get her tears under control. It seemed to take quite a number of painful minutes listening to Lyra sniffle before she finally drifted towards sleep, and even then, Nora was extremely careful as she tiptoed from the room. 

She checked on Lou and Alice again, and once she was certain they were still deeply asleep and safe, she made her way downstairs. She and Caden met eyes as soon as she stepped into the kitchen. The smell of coffee hung warm in the air like a reassuring hug. She sighed heavily; he pushed a mug across the table. 

“Anything?” she asked, walking over to sit across from him. She wrapped her hands around the mug and took a deep, grateful sip. The back of her head was beginning to ache with an oncoming tension headache. 

“Nothing,” he frowned. “I thought Lily and James would be back by now.”

“Me too. She made it sound like they would be in her message.”

She didn’t need to say _I’m worried_. They both were. 

“How was Lyra?” Caden asked. 

“Lyra-ish. She started crying for her dads before she fell asleep.”

“She needs a sibling.”

Nora laughed. “James and I say that all the time. I think it’d help her immensely. But then again, she’s used to being the center of their lives. And I won’t be having any more babies, that’s for sure.” Teasingly, she added: “Lily could do the honors this go around!”

Caden laughed. “She’d sooner cut her own uterus out, I can promise you that. We had a scare a couple months ago. She was…not okay with the prospect.”

Even considering her own difficult pregnancy with Lou, she didn’t understand Lily’s hatred of pregnancy, but everyone was different. She was a bit curious, though, and she could sense that he wasn’t closed off towards the idea of talking about it, so she asked: “And you felt…?”

“Mostly terrified,” he answered honestly. “Luckily, it wasn’t really anything. She’d probably burn down St. Mungo’s if another one of Scorpius’s procedures failed us.”

“Talking about me?” 

Nora gasped audibly and jumped in her seat. She twisted around towards the sound of her sister-in-law’s voice. She hadn’t heard her arrive. 

“Where the fuck did you come from? Are you just spawning up from hell now? That’s new,” Caden commented. 

“Yeah, they’re letting me use your shortcut,” she quipped back. But her voice was thin and her eyes tired; she wasn’t putting much into the banter at all. That wasn’t a good sign. Nora’s heart picked up pace in her anxiety. 

“We came through the Floo in Nora’s office,” Lily explained. She collapsed down in the chair beside Caden and immediately yanked her shoes off and flung them across the kitchen. She let her head fall against his arm and sighed heavily, her eyes falling shut. “We didn’t know if—“ she broke off to yawn— “the kids would be in the living room or not.”

“No, they’re in bed,” Nora assured Lily. She peered around her. “You said we. Jamie came back too, right?” 

“Yeah, I bet he’s checking in on your kids right now,” Lily guessed, and Nora was sure she was probably right.

“How is he? How’s Albus?” Caden asked quietly. 

Lily was quiet long enough that Nora glanced worriedly over at her. She had her face pressed into her husband’s shirt now; his hand settled hesitantly on her hair. He looked as anxious as Nora felt. 

“It’s really bad,” Lily finally admitted, her voice thick and shaky. “I dunno. I don’t know. I had to leave, I had to— I need to be here, with y— I needed to be home and away from all of that. If you and Nora want to go see him, Jamie and I thought we could take over here. It was just…it was a lot to bear.”

They needed more information, but Caden crushed her to his chest in a tight, protective hug, and Nora felt they probably wouldn’t get much more out of here. Whenever James held her like that, they didn’t move for quite a while. Of course, that was James. 

“What’s happening with him exactly? He fell through the glass, so he’s…cut all over? Cut inside? Why can’t they put his powder stuff on him?” 

“They did. Every bit they had, every place they could. The problem is, this isn’t a tiny superficial cut that needs a few sprinkles of powder on top. This is…it’s horrible. Dad said…my dad said it looked like he’d been hit with _Sectumsempra_. They had to use so much on the deepest wounds, and they only have a small amount. It’s so difficult to get— the ingredients— and he’s been using some of that very first massive batch they made when he got hit by that curse our third year. All this time, it’s lasted this long, and it would’ve lasted his whole life assuming he only had to use a few pinches every few months. But this is…bad.”

Nora looked away, her eyes welling with tears. She could only imagine the pain he was in, how frightened he must be. He was so happy. It wasn’t fair. 

“There’s got to be _something_ …”

“They’re trying to get their hands on a phoenix. They’re very hard to get, though; there’s only one known domesticated one and catching a wild phoenix is—”

Caden pulled Lily back by her shoulders suddenly with an urgency that drew Nora’s full attention. 

“Lil,” he said seriously, “the Moutohora Macaws.”

Nora felt like she’d been hit in the gut when she spotted the tears sparkling on her sister’s face. She seemed rightfully thrown by his sudden comment. “The Quidditch team? What?”

“They’ve got a phoenix. Their mascot is an actual phoenix,” he reminded her. “That’s the only known domesticated phoenix right now.”

“I know that, but that’s all the way back home in New Zealand.”

“But your mum’s got connections, surely. She’s got to know somebody— one of the players, the manager, someone,” Caden pressed. “Fuck, we know someone! Wendy’s brother-in-law is a Moutohora beater.”

“I doubt Wendy’s brother can kidnap Sparky the Phoenix and take him across the world.”

“Well, why not? They just need to be convinced. We can convince them. We can convince anyone of anything. I’m going to go to St. Mungo’s; I want to talk to your mum and to Scorpius. The twins are asleep in the guest bed.”

Nora missed whatever she said back because, at that moment, her husband returned, and she was blind and deaf to whatever else was being said. She stood at once and moved over to him as if she were drawn to him, and when she fell into his opened arms, she felt the reality of the situation really sink in. 

“Are you okay?” she asked softly. 

His arms were tight around her frame. “I’m just worried about my brother.”

Nora nodded against his chest. “Has he been unconscious this entire time? Is he in pain?” 

“No. And yes,” he answered, pained. “He just keeps asking about Lyra…it’s like he doesn’t remember the answer we give him…Victoire says it’s due to the blood loss.”

Nora sniffed. “I want to see him.”

“He asked for you once. You should go. My mum and dad would be glad to see you, too,” he said. “How are the kids?” 

“They don’t know anything.”

“Good. Asleep?”

“Yeah. Lyra’s with Benji and the twins are in the guest room. Alice is in our bed.”  
James lowered his face into his hands with a tired sigh. 

“Lyra.”

Nora’s heart clenched. She felt ill. “I know.”

“If Al—”

He broke off right as Nora’s expression twisted with pain. He shook his head lightly as if casting off the brief, horrid thought. 

“Nevermind,” he mumbled. 

Nora clutched him closer, certain that was the only way she could help him right now. 

“Go see him. I’ve got the kids. Go,” James urged. 

Nora nodded. “Okay. Caden, do you…” she trailed off. She’d turned to ask him if he wanted to go, but he was no longer in the room. “Oh. Did they leave?” 

James frowned. “I dunno. Maybe.”

Nora updated James on the last time Lou ate and which kids would probably wake up hungry due to not bothering to finish their dinner, and then she headed to the sitting room to Floo to St. Mungo’s. She really wasn’t sure what she’d see once she got there, but when she stepped into the sitting room to find Lily crying inside Caden’s arms, she realized it was probably worse than she could imagine. She backed up out of the room as quietly as she’d stepped in it, not wanting Lily to know she’d seen her, and then she reversed out onto the patio to apparate instead. 


	23. III. Honey and Milk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ginny experiences great loss. Lyra finds answers. Meanwhile, Lily steals a cherished mascot.

 

She had been here before. And the last time she was, she had left innumerable pieces of herself behind. The echoing only grew.

Sweat-soaked, trembling: “Where’s Lyra?”

Ginny had his hand in hers (she hadn’t let go of it in hours). She swallowed hard against the tears building behind her eyes, crawling up her throat.

“She’s safe,” she told Al, for what was probably the twentieth time that night. “She’s with Jamie and Nora. She’s safe.”

He struggled to speak; watching him trying to find the strength to part his lips was excruciating. It seemed to take herculean effort just to push the first word past his lips. The desperation in her son’s eyes as he fought to utter it told her it was the most important word of all.

“Lyra—she—don’t—”

Whatever he was going to say turned into a wet cough. Ginny had leaned in closer to her son, desperate to hear whatever he could say (knowing it might very well be the last thing she heard in his voice), and for the fourth time that night, she was sprayed with blood as he sputtered and coughed it up. Ginny had stopped reacting with shrieking shock. This time, she blinked the blood from her eyes, set a hand on his chest, and smoothed his hair back with her other hand. She stared into his eyes— Harry’s eyes— for the few, fleeting moments they flickered open. It occurred to her right then that she might be watching him die. Her eyes burned, and her chest tightened like a fist closing tight, and she didn’t know what to do. What was she supposed to do? Did she brush his hair back from his face like she’d been doing since he was a little boy and stay calm for his benefit? Or did she tell him that he was one-third of her heart, that there was nothing on this earth she wouldn’t do to save him, that the thought of never seeing him (talking to him, laughing with him, hugging him) ever again made her certain she wanted to die, too? Did she tell him that she loved him? Did she say goodbye? How could a mother say goodbye to her child? She had made him, brought him into this earth— how could he leave it now without her first leading the way?

More than anything, she wanted to cry. But to start crying would signal the end. She couldn’t. Not yet— not ever.

The healers in the room were more or less invisible to her, but she moved back automatically when they stepped in to siphon the blood from Albus’s throat. Once Albus’s airway was free from blood, his desperate, panicked expression smoothed into one of weak pain. He was so pale that the dark hue of his hair was jarring in comparison.

“This is not a good sign,” one healer said to another. “I guess the birthroot and yarrow aren’t helping.”

“I’ll go tell Mac,” the healer responded.

She rushed off to update the head healer. Nobody bothered to update the healer sitting on the other side of Albus’s bed, his white-blond head bowed, his hands clasped around one of Albus’s, his lips brushing Al’s knuckles as he whispered things nobody could hear. Ginny thought he was either praying or pleading with Albus. Both seemed silly. But it was better than sitting there frozen like she was doing. Better than pacing the corridors like Harry was doing. Their agony was mirrored, but the ways they were handling it were not.

“Scor,” Albus croaked suddenly. Every head in the room turned to him when he did. Scorpius lifted his mouth from Albus’s hand and peered at Albus in shock, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard, but Albus was looking right at him. Scorpius scrambled weakly to his feet.

“Albus, I’m here,” he said urgently. “It’s going to be okay. I love you. It’s going to be okay.”

Albus’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and Ginny felt a wave of nausea as he seemed to go slack. She rose swaying to her own feet, her heart pounding in horror, vomit churning up her throat. Had she lost him? Was he gone?

“Albus? Albus. Albus!” Scorpius turned frantic, his mind clearly jumping to the same dark conclusions as Ginny’s. He leaned over Albus and cradled his pale face in his hands. “Al! Al! Albus!”

Ginny’s hand fumbled for her son’s wrist. Right as she pressed over the feeble flutter of his pulse, she saw his eyes open again.

“Scorp,” he repeated, and when Scorpius perched on the edge of the bed and held his face desperately between his hands, Albus was able to scrounge up enough strength to finish. “I want Lyra.”

It shocked Ginny. She and Scorpius looked at each other in horror. Lyra? In here? Seeing her dad like _this_?

“Now? Like this?” Scorpius pressed gently. His hand trembled as he brushed his fingers lightly over Albus’s cracked, bloodstained lips. “Let’s get you better and then we’ll have her here.”

Albus drew his hand up from his side. It shook, and he didn’t seem to have much control over it, but he was able to set his hand on Scorpius’s, grabbing his fingers.

“No,” he said seriously. He coughed hard again right afterwards. Like Ginny, Scorpius hardly blinked as blood sprayed across his face. “I have to see her.”

Scorpius’s eyes were swimming with tears. And, to Ginny’s blurry horror, hers were, too. She knew what Albus meant. And Scorpius did as well.

“No,” Scorpius breathed. He held Albus’s hand. He leaned in and he kissed his rough lips. “No. Albus, you’re going to be fine. You’ll see.”

“I need to see her,” he persisted, and it felt as if she’d been stabbed right through the chest when she heard Albus’s first pained cry. His weeping was the saddest and feeblest thing she had ever heard. It was the worst thing she had ever heard. It made her head spin, her stomach flip inside out. “I have to tell her goodbye. I have to tell her— tell her how much I love her. Scorpius, I have to, I have to, please, please, please…”

His energy gave out quickly. His hand dropped from Scorpius’s. Scorpius heaved a sob so violent it shook the bed, his head shaking back and forth, back and forth, like he could deny what he was seeing that way.

“Albus, please,” he said, but Ginny could tell Albus wasn’t conscious anymore. It was only the slight rising and falling of his chest that even gave any indication that he was still alive.

And he was her baby. She was his mum. It was her job to be his advocate.

“We have to get Lyra here,” she said hoarsely.

But Lyra was Scorpius’s baby. He was _her_ advocate. He peered from Albus— bloody, half-dead, white as a sheet— and looked at Ginny in terror.

“We can’t. Ginny, we can’t let her see him like this.”

“He wants to see her. We can’t deny him that. That’s his child, Scorpius!”

“He’s not thinking clearly. He would never want her to see him like this— he’s not thinking— he’s delusional with blood loss— we _can’t_.”

“We can! We have to! If that’s his last wish—”

“Stop!! Stop!” Scorpius begged, and when he began sobbing, it tore further at Ginny’s heart. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and cradle him and sob with him. But she had to speak up for Albus.

“How can we deny him one last time to see her? How could we do that?” she asked.

He didn’t have an answer. He cried, and cried, and cried. It hurt so terribly—Ginny wanted to run towards the security of Harry’s arms— but Scorpius was her son, too. When she perched on the edge of Albus’s hospital bed and pulled Scorpius into her arms, he clutched onto her like she was a lifeline of some sort. Oddly, it made her feel stronger.

“I c-c-can’t lose him,” Scorpius wept. “Ginny, help me. Please. I need help. This can’t be happening…this can’t be happening!”

She couldn’t do a thing to help but embrace him as he cried over her son’s dying body. If muggle hell existed, she was certain she’d fallen into it.

* * *

 

The healers put Albus into a temporary sleep as they began cycling another round of blood into his body. Ginny walked on numb legs into the corridor of the ward. Her husband’s legs were trembling now, but he was still pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. His brow was furrowed as he searched for some sort of solution to this problem.

“C’mon, Harry,” Ginny said tiredly. She matched his page, sank her hand into his, and tugged gently. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t resist. He followed after her as she walked him towards the lounge only a few doors down. It was crowded with anxious, tearful family awaiting news— their family— but Ginny couldn’t find anything to say to any of them. Her parents were there in the corner with Rose. A few of Albus’s colleagues were grouped around with dark expressions. The entire Wood family was sitting stoically by the far wall.

Then she saw her own daughter and son-in-law in the doorway talking frantically with the head healer; it was the glimpse of hope in her daughter’s brown eyes that caught her attention. She kept hold of Harry’s hand and hurried over to where Lily, Caden, and the healer were standing.

“But theoretically, could that work?” Caden pressed urgently.

“Theoretically, yes. But there’s no way you two could make it back here in time…he’s got a couple hours max. He seems to lose blood faster with every transfusion he gets. The damage almost seems to be spreading…it’s like something set that curse off again.”

“But we can try,” Lily said stubbornly. She looked up at Caden; he nodded down at her, his lips set in a firm, determined line.

“Of course you can try. But you should say goodbye before you leave,” the healer told them.

The panic that flooded Lulu’s eyes at those words was painful to see. Lily beat the emotion back with difficulty, and then she squared her shoulders.

“I’m not saying goodbye to anybody,” she said thickly. She glanced over towards Ginny as she approached. Ginny held her daughter’s fierce gaze for a moment in time, and then she nodded, and Lily nodded back. She didn’t know what her daughter was going to do, but she trusted her wholeheartedly. If anyone could achieve something they set their mind to, it was Lulu.

“Mum, can you watch after the twins? We’ve got to go home. New Zealand home. We think we can get a phoenix. Can you make sure the twins are taken care of?”

“A phoenix?” Harry repeated.

“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later. The twins?” Lily pressed impatiently.

“Of course,” Harry told their daughter. “They’ll be looked after. Lu, be careful.”

“Always am. You tell Albus I said I’ll kick his arse if he doesn’t wait for me to get back,” Lily said. Her eyes were wet with tears when she turned.

Ginny wanted to hug Lily goodbye, to ask her what she was doing, but she couldn’t seem to process what was happening enough to. She felt like she was stuck in a horrible, surreal nightmare, one that left her dazed and removed. There was only one thing she was sure of.

“We have to get Lyra here,” she told Harry.

Harry didn’t shoot that idea down, but his brows furrowed over his glasses. It made his scar fold in on itself.

“To see Al?”

“Yes. He was begging to see her. He thinks he’s—” Ginny stopped. The horrible word stuck at the back of her throat. She looked up at Harry, waiting and desperate for something from him, but she wasn’t sure what. When he reached out and touched her shoulders, she realized what it was; she collapsed into his arms, her eyes wet with tears, and it was then that she cried. “I-I-I don’t know what to do,” she wept.

Harry’s arms shook, but he held her firmly. She hid her face into his cloak, and beneath the sterile scent of the hospital, Ginny smelled home. Harry had to fix this. Harry would fix this. He always fixed everything.

“I don’t either,” he admitted, his voice broken. “I’m scared, Gin.”

She was so scared that _scared_ didn’t even seem like the right word. It seemed to her that another word needed to exist to encompass the wretched terror enveloping her.

“He needs to see her. He asked me, Harry. What if— what if that’s the last thing he ever asks of me?”

_What if my last act as his mother is to let him down, to deny him something he needs?_

“What does Scorpius think?”

“He’s not thinking anything,” Ginny sniffed. She looked up at Harry. For an odd moment, she felt a surge of the same emotions she’d felt all those years ago during the Battle of Hogwarts when she’d thought Harry was gone forever. It left her feeling ill. “He’s worried about Lyra, but he’s not…he can’t even let himself consider that Albus might not…and if Al does…if Al does and we don’t fulfill this wish…Harry, it’ll kill him. It’ll kill me.”

Harry reached a hand up and rubbed at his face. It chilled Ginny to her bones to see the tears sparkling in his green eyes (Albus’s eyes).

“Let me talk with him. We can’t bring Lyra here unless Scorpius is okay with it…it wouldn’t be fair. Albus wouldn’t want that, for us to go against Scorpius’s wishes. But maybe we can change his mind.”

Ginny nodded, but she had already made up hers. One way or another, Albus would get to see his daughter. And Lyra would get to see her dad. It was only right. She thought of all the people she’d lost without the chance to say a proper goodbye…she thought of her brother…

With her heart so vast and empty it felt like it was consuming everything around it, Ginny followed after Harry as he went back to Albus’s room.

* * *

 

Scorpius resisted the idea of having Lyra there with a stubbornness Ginny had never known him to have.

It wasn’t until Albus took another turn for the worse and begged them again, gasping around tears and blood, that he relented.

“Okay,” he told Albus, tears rolling down his cheeks, the front of his body pressed to the side of Albus’s. “We’ll get her here. Okay.”

That seemed to fill Albus with energy he hadn’t had before. He found some inner resolve, enough to sit up with Harry and Scorpius’s help while Ginny and three mediwitches cleaned him up as best they could. After that, he propped himself up against his pillows— shaking, but upright— and struggled to stay conscious, even responding to a few questions from Harry in a semi-coherent way. Scorpius sent a Patronus to Draco, and within seconds, Draco sent one back informing them that he and Lyra would be there in five minutes. Albus managed to stay awake the entire time they waited.

And Ginny knew there was a term for it— rallying— but she preferred to imagine instead that Albus’s love for Lyra was going to miraculously cure him. Even as the blood beneath him spread and soaked the bed as his wounds pulsated with more and more blood that couldn’t and wouldn’t be staunched.

* * *

 

She and Scorpius had just finished changing Albus’s bandages for the second time when Lyra and Draco arrived. They were fighting against the clock; they only had a few minutes before he bled through them again, and nobody in that room wanted Lyra to see her daddy bleeding out in front of her.

Part of Ginny didn’t want to be in the room when Lyra entered, but Albus had a grip on her hand, and he didn’t let go until Lyra stepped in the room. And then it was only to reach out for her.

Lyra clearly knew something was terribly wrong— she was as white as Scorpius was and looked fit to be sick all over the floor— but she didn’t hesitate to run for Albus’s arms. She leapt up onto the bed and threw herself into his bandaged, bloody arms.

“Daddy, I miss you,” she said at once, and that comment tipped Scorpius over the edge. He began crying softly from his place at Albus’s side. Albus lifted one arm off Lyra to wrap it around Scorpius’s shoulders, drawing him closer to his body. Comforting him when he could hardly breathe himself.

That was enough for Ginny. She stood, wanting to leave, wanting to run from this— since when was she such a coward?

But Draco was standing sentry at the door, his lips pressed into a firm line, his posture hard, and Ginny knew she couldn’t run if Draco wasn’t. She had to remind herself that Draco was no stranger to bedside goodbyes. He was no stranger to the emptiness of losing a spouse. And now his son wouldn’t be, either. It was all so unfair.

Ginny had truly expected Lyra to have a full and complete mental breakdown, but it was much quieter than that, much softer. Lyra held onto Albus as tightly as she could, but she didn’t say much, and Ginny wasn’t even sure if she was crying. Ginny kept waiting for Albus to tell Lyra goodbye, but he never said those words. Ginny guessed just holding her close was good enough for the both of them.

When he had to lean away from Lyra twice in a row due to coughing up blood, Draco took a silent step forward. Somehow, they all seemed to know it was time for Lyra to leave. She didn’t need to see her dad bleeding everywhere, or getting blood cycled back into his body, or having blood siphoned from his airways.

Albus didn’t want to let go of her, though. Ginny watched behind tears as he rocked her in his arms.

“You’re my pumpkin,” he told her, his voice so tender he might as well have said _I love you more than my own life._

Lyra latched her arms tighter around his neck at that, and all at once, she fell into loud, horrific wailing. Ginny’s stomach turned; she saw Harry turn his face to the side and wipe at the tears flowing down his face. Draco stepped in and tore Lyra from Albus’s weak arms, and at first Ginny thought it was horrifically cruel, but then she saw that Albus’s blood had already soaked through Lyra’s emperor penguin-printed pinafore.

“Daddy! Daddy! I want my Daddy! Papa! Papa! Papa!”

Scorpius lifted his face from Albus’s shoulder and reached automatically for his daughter, but Draco didn’t bring her over.

“She needs to leave,” he told Scorpius.

Ginny didn’t know where Draco was finding the strength, but she was certain it was breaking something inside of him. Especially when Lyra began flailing in his arms, reaching desperately for Albus.

“Daddy! I want my daddy! I want my daddy— Daddy! Daddy, please! Daddy! Papa! Papa! Please!”

Draco was much stronger than his five-year-old granddaughter, but he wasn’t strong enough to keep his grip when flames suddenly raced down the lengths of Lyra’s arms. The magic went away as soon as it’d burst from her, but it had been enough to make Draco drop her in surprise. The second Lyra’s feet hit the floor, she bolted towards the bed, evading Harry as he reached in to grab her a moment too late. She hoisted herself up onto the bed, threw herself over Scorpius’s lap, and then—

Ginny had stepped forward to grab her, but she paused, momentarily baffled. Lyra was searching through Scorpius’s cloak pockets desperately, her breaths gasping around her sobs, such an air of desperation and hysteria about her that Ginny briefly worried she’d have a heart attack at age five.

“Lyra…pumpkin, what are you doing?” Albus managed. Scorpius tried to grab Lyra’s hands to pull her in for a hug, but she smacked at his hands— something that ordinarily would have been very shocking.

“Where is the perfume? Where is it? Papa, where?!” Lyra pleaded, her voice thin and whiny.

Ginny was just thinking that Lyra had literally lost her mind when Scorpius reached into his inner cloak pocket and pulled out what vaguely resembled a perfume bottle. She had no idea why Lyra was insistent on finding this— nor why Scorpius had it— but the situation was odd enough to have everybody’s full attention.

“This? What do you want with it, Lyra?” Scorpius asked warily.

She reached up and pulled the tiny green bottle from Scorpius’s hands. It was glass with a cork, and after Lyra fought with the top for a second, it popped open with a small explosion of smoke.

“Er,” Ginny said, expecting Scorpius to stop Lyra at any moment. But he seemed spellbound by whatever she was doing. He was watching her like she’d suddenly gained the key to some hidden room he’d longed to search for ages.

They watched as Lyra scooted back over to Albus. She leaned in. She set the mouth of the tiny bottle against his trembling lips.

“You’ve got to, Daddy,” she begged, and it was only when she started to tip the bottle up that Harry was able to shake through the weird daze that’d settled over them. He lunged forward and pulled the bottle from her hands.

And odder still, it wasn’t Lyra who protested first.

“No, wait,” Scorpius said sharply. Harry and Lyra looked at him, Harry with confusion, Lyra with hope. “Lyra, why are you trying to give that to Daddy?”

She blinked. She looked from the bottle in Harry’s hand to her dad, and then she looked back at Scorpius.

“I don’t know,” she said tearfully. “I just know. I’ve got to. We have to give it to Daddy. It’s for him. It’s Daddy’s.”

Scorpius reached out and held Lyra’s shoulders gently, peering seriously into her green eyes. “What is it, Lyra? Do you know what’s in the green bottle?”

“It’s Daddy’s,” she repeated.

“But what _is it?!”_ Scorpius repeated. Ginny had no idea why he was pressing this _now_. How was this important when Albus was lying there dying?

Scorpius was searching for some sort of answer, but Lyra looked as confused as him.

“I don’t know, Papa! I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! I just saw it in my dreams last night. I saw that pretty green bottle. And Daddy drank it!”

It wasn’t a real answer. It was just a silly five-year-old’s dream. But it meant something to Scorpius. _And_ to Albus. They shared a long, meaningful look, and before Ginny could utter a word of protest, Albus reached for the bottle, pulling it easily from Harry’s fingers. Before anyone could so much as blink, he’d thrown the vial back and downed every bit of it. Ginny let out a gasp, edging forward to set a hand on Albus’s arm.

“Get a healer,” Draco said urgently. “HEY! WE NEED A HEALER!”

Scorpius sat tense at Albus’s side, his hand resting on Albus’s thigh, watching every shift of his expression like a hawk. After a few heavy seconds, he moved his palm to press over Albus’s heart. He stared hard into Albus’s eyes as he presumably counted the beats. Ginny’s own heart was pounding so hard she could feel her pulse in her face. Her knees trembled. She thought she might be sick at any moment.

“Albus, you have no idea what that was,” Harry said, aghast. He looked paler than Ginny had ever seen him. Her feet carried her over to where he was standing of their own accord, and when she grabbed his hand, he held tight to hers.

Albus sank back down against the pillows. Lyra flung herself into his arms at once.

“So what?” Albus managed, coughing violently on the last word. “I’m already dying. What else could it do to me?”

That word— _dying—_ made Lyra whimper into Albus’s blood-soaked shirt. He clutched her closer in response. Ginny looked at them, at the desperate way their arms were locked around each other, and as she did she thought: _there will be no parting them. The next time Lyra leaves his arms, Albus will be dead._

She swayed on her feet. Harry— though he was no better— reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her.

Lyra’s weeping became loud and hysterical.

“Shh,” Albus soothed. He kissed her hair shakily. “It’s okay, pumpkin.”

But it wasn’t. And if Albus left them for good, things would never be okay again— especially not for Lyra. ( _Especially not for Ginny.)_

The healers Draco had yelled for entered with a wary air of defeat. It was clear they’d given up on Albus. When Draco and Harry explained what had happened, they hardly seemed to blink. The sad way they looked at Albus as they confiscated the green bottle made Ginny certain they considered what he’d just done an act of suicide. All the same, they cleared his airways of blood once more, repacked several of the wounds leaking blood into the hospital mattress with the wave of their wands, and then they faced Harry.

“Can you figure out what it was?” Harry demanded.

“We can try. In the meantime, we can try to cycle his remaining blood to see if we can get rid of it—”

“No!” Lyra cried. “No! No! No! Leave him alone! You leave him _alone_!”

For one of the first times Ginny could ever remember, Lyra strongly resembled Lily. Looking at her then— tear-streaked, fierce, furious— she was every bit as demanding and passionate as her genetic mother.

“She’s right,” Albus said weakly. “I don’t want you to do anything else to me. Leave me alone. Please.”

Looking at her youngest son, her baby (even if he wasn’t technically her baby)…Ginny thought that green vial probably _was_ an act of suicide. Albus had been pulled back from the brink of death over and over and over again tonight; maybe he saw no escape from the suffering, the misery. Maybe he didn’t want the healers to keep pulling him back when all that awaited him was more pain.

Who was Ginny to fight that? Who was she to argue?

 _Well,_ the fierce voice in her own head said, _his mother, that’s who!_

She had brought him here. She couldn’t watch him leave. She couldn’t.

Harry and Draco were already arguing with Albus (or rather _at_ him, as he wasn’t arguing back) when Ginny reached over and took his hand in hers. Her son’s eyes moved from Lyra’s face to Ginny’s.

“Al,” Ginny said, her voice broken. “This isn’t it. This isn’t it, love.”

She wasn’t even sure precisely what she meant. This wasn’t his time to go? This wasn’t the way to do it? This wasn’t how he should behave in front of Lyra?

But it meant something to Albus. His face crumbled in pain.

“I can’t, Mum,” he said back, and just like Ginny’s words, she both understood and didn’t understand. Couldn’t do what? Die now, having only just started living? Suffer any longer? Say goodbye?

“Your sister’s gone to see if she can get help. A little bit longer, Al. Let them help you as long as they can,” she said. But it came out more as a plea than an order.

Albus coughed again. Ginny noticed the wounds on his left side— so much deeper than the rest, as that’s the side that’d fallen through the window first— were pulsing with blood worse than before.

“Lily can’t help me,” he managed, though his words were thick with blood. His airways had just been cleared— was he bleeding at a quicker rate internally, too? Was that vial some sort of blood thinner on top of it all?

Ginny wasn’t sure if Lyra was still crying or not— her face was buried so completely in Albus’s bandages that she couldn’t make out even the edge of her expression— but Albus’s arms tightened around her as if she’d let out a window-shattering wail.

“I want to go home,” Albus managed, with what dignity he had left. He turned and looked at Scorpius. “I want to go home. I want our bed. I want to die there.”

Ginny fully anticipated Scorpius to shatter to pieces at those words— she would have, had Harry been the one saying them to her— but she had to remind herself once more that Scorpius was practiced in this sort of agony. Instead of falling apart, he turned to look at all of them grouped around Albus’s bed.

“Let me talk to him alone,” he requested, and even though separating from Albus— knowing this might be the last time she ever saw him, spoke with him, touched his hand— was agonizing, Ginny and Harry both followed Draco from the room.

* * *

 

Nora was pacing the waiting room when they arrived. She looked up at them, horrified and tear-streaked, and it only took one look at Harry’s expression for her to sink down into a chair numbly.

Ginny wanted to comfort her, but she couldn’t seem to move. She couldn’t sit. She stood still in the doorway while Harry walked over to set his arm across Nora’s shoulders and updated her. She wasn’t sure where he found the strength.

She realized it soon after he began speaking to Nora. It was denial.

“He’s going to be just fine,” he comforted. “The healers are going to figure it out. They just need a bit more time.”

Ginny felt Draco’s eyes on hers. He was standing at the doorway, too, too pained to sit. When they locked eyes, she understood that Draco was on the same page as her. And when her eyes filled with tears, Draco’s did the same. He turned his face to the side. His sob— so wild and feral sounding, like he hadn’t let himself properly cry in decades, like the grief of his life had built up and burst out at this very moment— startled Ginny to weeping, too.

And Harry, his voice sounding older than Ginny had ever heard it, just kept repeating to Nora: _he’s going to be fine. He’s going to be just fine._

It shocked them all when it was Lyra who emerged from the room, covered in her dad’s blood but oddly resolute.

“Daddy’s going home,” she informed them all, and then she walked over and wrapped her arms around Draco’s legs. Ginny didn’t quite understand it when Draco pulled her up into his arms to cradle her and whisper _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I’m sorry_ , because how was what happened to Albus in anyway Draco’s fault?

But as Scorpius pushed Albus from the room in a wheelchair, his face ashen, Ginny understood.

To Draco, seeing history repeat itself in this way— so close, so sickeningly echoing— it must have felt like a family curse.

And she felt for him, she did.

But _she_ was the one losing her child.

* * *

 

She felt like the Potter-Malfoys knew something nobody else did. She saw it in their lingering glances that held unspoken words, in the oddly composed way they held themselves, in the quick, hopeful looks Lyra and Scorpius gave Albus any time he made any sudden sound.

They were waiting for something. What?

Even Lyra, who Ginny would have thought would be comatose from agony, was more or less sane. She took it upon herself to be Albus’s ‘water girl’ and kept herself very busy bringing water to her Daddy. Ginny knew for a fact that Albus was dumping most of the water in each glass into the potted fern near the bed, but she didn’t say a word about it, and Lyra continued feeling like she was doing her dad a very important deed.

Albus bled more and more with each passing half-hour, until finally, he fell back against the pillows, ashen and slack. He had lost more blood in the past ten minutes than he had in that span of time before; he no longer than enough left for his blood to be replenished. It was the beginning of the end. Ginny sat in an armchair in the bedroom and shivered, and shivered, and shivered. Nothing brought her warmth— not the blanket Jamie brought her, or the tea her brother pressed into her palms. She couldn’t leave, couldn’t look from Albus, couldn’t _breathe_.

And still Scorpius and Lyra waited, reclined on either side of her son’s unconscious, dying body, their faces serious and focused. They reminded Ginny of a muggle painting she’d seen in a museum once of monks from centuries ago. They were still holding onto hope. Ginny was so frightened of what would happen to them when they were forced to let go.

“Here,” Hermione said suddenly.

Ginny tore her eyes from Albus and looked up at her sister-in-law. Hermione’s eyes were puffy from tears. Ginny immediately recognized the substance in the mug she was holding out.

“I don’t want that,” Ginny said hoarsely.

Why was she hoarse? Had she been screaming? She couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t she remember? Maybe this was a nightmare like she’d been hoping. Maybe she’d wake up.

The mug was warm as it was pressed against her palm.

“You need it,” Hermione ordered.

But she didn’t. Why should she feel fake calmness? When it wore off, her son would still be dead. She would still be without him. She would never see him laugh again— never hug him— never play Quidditch with him— never see him beat anybody in Chess— never watch him twirl Lyra around in his arms— never watch him and Harry scowl identically at something Lily said— never eat another one of his interesting dinner concoctions— never see him quit his job to be truly happy—

Was this her fault? If she had just convinced him earlier to quit, before this happened…what could she have done better? How could she have been more forceful about it? How could she have saved his life? Was this her fault? She would have done anything— _anything—_ to save him.

“Come on,” Hermione urged again, and it was then that Ginny realized she was gasping for air.

“Gin,” she heard her brother complain softly. “Just drink the bloody thing.”

She wouldn’t, though. And a few seconds later, when she felt the only arms she needed right then wrap around her, she knew that this was something she— they— had to feel together.

She didn’t know where Harry had been the past half-hour. She didn’t know what he’d been doing. Trying to save the day, she was certain. But him coming back here, to Albus, to her, meant one thing: he had given up, too.

She cradled his arms to her chest and turned her face to hide it against his bicep. He smelled just the same, like home, like family. But their family was doomed. It would never be the same again.

In that moment, she wanted to bury herself in Harry’s arms and never come out. She wanted to follow Albus wherever he went. To protect him, to make sure he was okay. She wanted to go with him. _But that’s not the way,_ that voice in her head said. She wanted it to be.

When she heard Lyra gasp, she was too afraid to look. She was too afraid of what she’d see. She felt, with a surge of pain, that she had just lost her child for good. She gripped Harry to the point of pain for the both of them. It wasn’t until he whispered urgently: _“Gin!”_ that she looked up.

And even when she did, she still didn’t understand much. It took her a second to see the faint, golden haze around Albus. And as she studied it, it grew more pronounced, until it appeared that Albus was glowing.

“What’s that?” Ginny asked.

Harry looked mesmerized. The glow was so bright now that it glowed off his wet cheeks and the lenses of his glasses. “I have no idea,” he admitted.

Deep down, Ginny had assumed it was something of Harry’s doing, some way he was saving the day. But he had no idea what was happening. Draco was asking Scorpius questions. Ginny’s mum was watching Albus with her lips parted in surprise. James was staring.

Everybody looked shocked— except for Lyra. She flung her arms around Albus in joy, that golden glow enveloping her now, too, and she let out the most joyous cry Ginny had ever heard.

“Daddy!!” she celebrated.

Instinctively, Ginny knew whatever was happening was good. She knew it was happening because of that mysterious vial. She couldn’t have told anybody what the vial was exactly, but she could see what it was doing. The bleeding wounds covering Albus’s body were closing. His pallid skin was regaining its usual flush. His toes flexed, his hand moved across the sheets, he stirred. His eyelids opened. He was coming back to them.

When he opened his eyes again, Scorpius’s face was the first he saw. Albus beamed weakly. Scorpius reached out and held his face in his hands like he was made of glass, trembling from head to toe, as awed as all of them, but perhaps less confused.

“Albus?” he breathed.

Albus lifted a shaky hand and touched Scorpius’s arm. “I feel like I was hit by the Hogwarts Express,” he said gruffly. Then, cryptically: “It worked?”

Scorpius nodded. Lyra curled up against Albus’s side gently, her little hand reaching up to pat his hair lovingly.

“Yes,” Scorpius said tremulously. “It did.”

Albus sank further into the pillows with relief. “You were right.”

Scorpius wiped at his eyes. He shook his head. “Lyra was right.”

Albus turned to look at his daughter, his eyes swelling with tears now, too, and it was all Ginny could do to keep from weeping once more as he pulled Lyra into an emotional hug.

“You were such a brave, clever girl,” Albus said tearfully. “So clever.”

Lyra didn’t seem very impressed with herself, nor did she seem to care much about her role in any of it, whatever that had been. She just smiled and smiled and held onto her daddy.

Ginny was lost, but she knew the time would come for answers. Right now, it was time to hug her son. She and Harry made their way over in a similarly confused daze, and once they both looked into his eyes and saw that he really was awake and doing better, they sandwiched him in a hug like they used to do when he was little.

“You’re squashing me,” Albus teased, his words muffled into Ginny’s shoulder.

She wanted to hold on tighter and never let go.

* * *

 

Healers traipsed in and out of Albus and Scorpius’s home. They checked Albus from head to toe, ran a combination of magical and muggle tests on him, and concluded that the bleeding had indeed stopped.

“It must’ve been whatever was in that vial,” a healer muttered to Scorpius, bemused. “We sent it off to the Department of Unknown Magical Substances, but they’re always backlogged— I suppose we’ll find out what it was eventually. Guess it’s a good thing he drank it, huh?”

Ginny felt that was an understatement. There was no way for her to ever describe to anyone how traumatic those few hours had been before the vial worked its magic. Of course, she didn’t have to describe it to Scorpius; the haunted way he looked at the healer as he nodded told her he’d been just as scarred as she had.

Oddly, Albus was the least scarred of all. Ginny had expected him to be like he’d been the last time this had happened, when he was in his fifth year. She’d prepared to stay the night for as many nights as she had to. She’d prepared herself for his fear, his trembling, his nightmares. But Albus came back to life with what seemed like renewed focus. He was animated in every conversation, made jokes on his own behalf, and seemed to sleep just fine. Ginny didn’t trust it; she was sure this would all hit him sooner or later and he’d be a wreck. It was no small thing to die and come back. And the healers were certain he’d been dead moments before that golden glow began.

Still, it was a full day before Ginny was alone with Albus and felt she could tentatively breach the topic. Scorpius had left to take Lyra to school— she hadn’t been too thrilled about it—and Harry had to return to his students, leaving Ginny with her son. She was thankful. She needed time with just him, and the way he smiled at her told her he had, too.

“How’s it feel to be twice-risen?” Ginny asked lightly.

Albus smiled, but it seemed a bit feeble. Ginny wanted to do something for him— bring him water, a blanket, food, something— but Lyra had left Ginny no opportunity to play mum. Lyra waited tirelessly on Albus, fetching him anything and everything you could imagine, and everybody knew better than to try and stop her; the one time Albus had insisted firmly that she go outside and play with the twins, she’d sat outside in the garden and sobbed until they let her back inside. It was the way she was coping with the trauma _she’d_ endured, and as Ginny told Albus and Scorpius, it was best to let her work through it her own way. Merlin knew she’d learned that the hard way with her own children, particularly Al and Lulu.

“Less alarming than last time, actually,” he told her. He sounded brave, but there was an edge in his eyes that Ginny didn’t miss. He looked to the door as if double-checking that no one else was there, and then he looked back at Ginny. “Mum. I feel…odd.”

Concern overtook Ginny so suddenly and completely that it made her heart stutter in her chest. She drew closer to the bed, her hand falling automatically on his forehead. He didn’t feel feverish at all. She moved her hand down to stroke his cheek, frowning.

“How so? What hurts?”

He pursed his brow. “Nothing hurts. I’m not in pain. I dunno. I just don’t feel…like me.”

Ginny considered that. “Well, you lost nearly all your blood and drank an odd magic substance…I think it’s probably normal to feel off. Is this how you felt the last time this happened to you?”

“No,” Albus said at once. It told Ginny he’d already asked himself that same question. “No. I’ve never felt this before. I feel…hollowed out.”

Ginny studied the outline of his body beneath the covers, searching for some evidence of injury. More blood, maybe. A crater in his chest. Ribs protruding— maybe that hollow feeling was just extreme hunger, maybe he’d been so overworked he hadn’t been eating. But he looked normal.

“Like hunger?”

“No,” Albus said definitively. “No. Like…I don’t know. Like something’s missing. But I feel…fine. I mean, I don’t feel ill. I’m not exhausted, not really. I dunno.”

He looked frustrated and bothered. Ginny knew she wasn’t doing a good job helping him feel better. She hoped he didn’t regret telling her. She knew he hadn’t told anyone else; had he told Scorpius, Scorpius would’ve been at his bedside freaking out as they spoke.

“Is it like sadness?” Ginny wondered.

“No. Not like that. Deeper than that,” he said. Ginny guessed he felt a bit bad for how quickly he was shooting down her suggestions because he backtracked and added: “I get what you mean, though. But when you’re sad and you have that sort of feeling, it’s here—” he thumped over his heart— “But it’s not _here_. It’s _here_.” He set his palm firmly over the spot just underneath his sternum, in the middle of his torso. Ginny perked up.

“Oh! Al, maybe you’ve got an ulcer! Your granddad had one once— it’s simple to fix—”

“It’s not that,” Albus interrupted. He sounded a bit frustrated this time. “It doesn’t hurt. Nevermind. I don’t know. I’m probably just imagining things.”

He was uneasy as he reached onto the bedside table and picked up the little plate Lyra had left there before she went off to school. It was laden with loads of different types of biscuits— _so you have plenty when I’m at school, Daddy_ , Lyra had said seriously— and Albus chose a ginger one to munch halfheartedly on. Ginny smoothed the blankets over his legs as the silence settled over them.

“You should mention it to Scorpius,” she finally said.

Albus made a noncommittal sound.

“It could be a side-effect of whatever you swallowed. You should tell him.”

“So he can fret himself to an early grave? If I start feeling ill, I’ll tell him,” Albus said. He set the plate back down on the bedside table. “Mum, do you know where my wand is? I haven’t broken another one, have I? I haven’t seen it since I woke up— Lyra’s been waiting on me hand and foot so I haven’t really needed it.”

Ginny rose. “Yeah, it’s in the sitting room. I’ll get it for you. Want anything else?”

Albus looked pointedly at the bedside table laden with something from nearly every food group, 3 different teapots full of steaming tea, two muggle puzzles, a portable Chess set, and a stack of books towering taller than the potted fern beside the bed.

“Think I’m good for now thanks to my little pumpkin,” he said. Ginny laughed.

On her way to the sitting room, she heard what sounded like a crash from the other side of the house, followed by swears shrieked in tiny voices. She sighed.

“I told him not to bring them here yet…” mumbling underneath her breath, Ginny turned and hurried towards the sitting room her twin grandchildren had just Floo’d into.

“Ginny!” Elliot exclaimed, elated. Ginny returned his exuberant hug, opened her arms expectantly for Iris, and then busied herself with brushing soot from their clothes and hair as Jamie crashed into the fireplace after them.

“It hasn’t even been three days yet. Albus literally died. Give him some time for peace and quiet,” Ginny scolded.

“I know, I know,” Jamie said. “But I wanted to see him and I had no one to watch A&E.”

Ginny waited, but no explanation for the new nickname came. She set her hands on the twins’ shoulders, pulled them back so they were leaning against her legs, and asked: “A&E? Don’t you mean _I_ and E? Her name’s Iris, not A-ris.”

“No. I mean A&E. Have you ever been to a muggle A&E? Their emergency departments in their hospitals? Because if those places could be condensed and turned into human form, they’d be these two.”

He pointed at Iris and Elliot. Elliot stuck his tongue out at Jamie. Iris scowled.

“I am not an A&E!” Elliot complained. “I’m not!”

“But have you ever been in one?” Jamie challenged. He leaned in and poked Elliot’s tummy. “Huh? Have you? Huh?” Elliot began giggling and squirmed further into Ginny’s embrace. She wrapped the twins up tighter in her arms.

“Well, I’ll take over watching _A &E. _You can go see your brother,” she decided. She lifted Iris up when Iris twisted and held her arms out. As soon as she was perched on Ginny’s hip, she buried her face in Ginny’s shoulder and threaded her fingers gently in her hair. She wasn’t usually this clingy; Ginny guessed being away from her parents as long as she had was impacting her. “Have you heard from Lily?”

“Nope. I sent a letter, but it came back. Our owl couldn’t find them. They must be traveling back here already.”

Ginny felt a sting of worry. “Hmm. I expected them back by now.”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” James said firmly, shooting a pointed look at the twins. _Not in front of them,_ he mouthed. _Their inner-Lyras came out this morning._

Ginny arched an eyebrow. Jamie traced his finger down the side of his cheek just underneath his eye, miming tears rolling down his face. Ginny blinked.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. She looked down at Elliot who was still clutching tightly to her leg. Her heart swelled with love and sympathy. “You two need some Ginny-time. C’mon.”

She half-walked, half-dragged Elliot towards the sitting room (he’d decided letting go of her leg wasn’t in his best interest). Once they were in there, she threw herself down on the sofa, yanked Elliot up into her lap by his arm, and smothered the twins in hugs and at least five kisses. They melted right into her affection.

“So who’s ‘accident’ and who’s ‘emergency’?” Ginny quipped.

The twins exchanged a brief look.

“I’m ‘accident’,” Elliot declared.

“I’m ‘emergency’,” Iris said.

“To be clear, you were both accidents, and you’ve both caused quite a fair share of emergencies,” Ginny teased. It rolled right off the twins. They were already burrowing back into her embrace. “Missing your parents, are we?”

“They been gone for so fucking long I got three grey hairs,” Iris grumbled.

Ginny laughed aloud. She pulled Iris back and studied her copper hair. “Yeah? Where?”

Iris gestured vaguely at her hair. “Here, and here, and here!”

Elliot lunged forward, his hand outstretched and reaching for Iris’s long hair. A second later, she yelped and slapped her palm against her scalp.

“Ow!! Ouch, Elliot! Don’t do that, you prickly-headed tosser!”

Elliot ignored her. He was holding one of Iris’s hairs up to the light.

“It’s not grey. It’s…sort of…golden-y, or red-y, maybe…” he trailed off.

“It’s _your_ hair color, Elliot,” Ginny provided.

Elliot squinted hard at the hair and then pulled his glasses off his face. It took Ginny a moment to figure out what he was doing, but then she realized he was studying his reflection in his glasses lenses.

“Oh yeah,” he agreed.

Ginny laughed. She felt Iris’s eyes on her, and when she looked back at her granddaughter, she was startled to see tears in her eyes.

“What is it, love?” Ginny asked softly. She reached out and stroked Iris’s hair back from her face. She looked so tiny in moments like these; it was easy to overlook her tiny stature when she was behaving in larger-than-life ways.

“I want my mummy and my daddy,” she whispered.

Ginny anticipated Elliot’s loud, overdramatic wailing seconds before it started. But she didn’t anticipate Iris joining him. Emotional outbursts were typical for Elliot and Lyra, but Iris was as level-headed as a child her age could get, in Ginny’s opinion. She pulled both the twins back into her arms and sighed.

“Oh, I know. Get it all out…it’s going to be okay…”

“Why d-did they go home without us? I miss our dragons, t-t-too!” Iris wailed.

“They hurried there to try and get something to help Albus,” Ginny explained.

“But Albus is fine!”

“He is now. We didn’t know if he would be when your parents left.”

Sensing they probably needed a distraction more than anything, Ginny rose with the twins still in her arms (with shameful difficulty…her Quidditch muscles atrophied more and more each day it seemed), grabbed what she’d originally left Albus’s room for in the first place (his wand), and carted them back towards the room to deliver it to Al.

“I bet when your parents are back you’ll wish you’d been lawless orphans just a bit longer,” Ginny teased lightly. “Surely you two are getting up to all sorts of trouble at Uncle Jamie’s. He’s soft and trusting at heart— bet you can trick him easier than you can trick your mum.”

“No,” Iris scoffed. “We got no freedom at all! Rory bosses us.”

Ginny bit back her smile. “She looks after you?”

“ _Bosses us._ ”

“There’s like…a hundred of people who boss us there!” Elliot complained. “We get no space, no freedom, no respect!”

“No respect, really? Wow, it must be difficult to live with Uncle Jamie and Aunt Nora.”

The twins missed her sarcasm.

“It is ‘cause somebody’s watching you all the time! Practically every second of your entire life! They even check on us when we’re in the bath! What— they think we’re gonna drown in such itty water?! The Giant Squid from the Great Lake’s gonna come up from the drain and eat our toes?!”

Iris pinned Ginny with an indignant look. “We can swim since we were _babies_.”

“You could not, you silly thing,” Ginny laughed. “You two _do_ realize that this is generally how it works to be a kid, right? Adults supervise you and watch over you. That’s normal.”

They thought very little of that assessment of what was _normal_ and ignored it. Ginny thought about their wild, reckless lives back home, and then she thought about life in James and Nora’s house, and she had to agree that the two were at least very different. Still— it could’ve been worse. Had the circumstances been different, they could’ve been watched by Albus and Scorpius. And _their_ parenting was so many degrees removed from Lily and Caden’s that it might as well have been on opposite poles.

“We want our home,” Elliot complained. “With our dragons and our Big Boy and our beds and our toys and our brooms and our Mia and our normal food.”

“I know. You’ll be back there in no time,” Ginny assured them.

She did wish somebody would get in touch with Lily and Caden, though. And she was beginning to feel a bit guilty; with all that was going on with Albus, she hadn’t really stopped long enough to realize her youngest was still gone. James had begun worrying about her before her own mother did. It made her think about Albus’s fourth year. Lily and James had spent that entire year in the shadows while she and Harry dealt with Albus’s multiple traumas. She hadn’t wanted to ever do that again.

She was still dwelling on her recent gig as a shite mother as they stepped in Albus’s room. James was sprawled out on the bed with his brother, chattering away about some particularly daft Ministry employee that Albus apparently enjoyed mocking.

“Here,” Ginny said, offering Albus’s wand to Iris. “Take that to Al. He’s been asking for it.”

Iris nodded and walked around Albus and Scorpius’s bed so she could climb up on Albus’s other side. Elliot, however, took off running and then flung himself through the air.

“AHHHHHHHH-HA!” He cried, landing hard on the end of the bed.

“Elliot!” Ginny and James chorused.

He righted himself, looked back at them, and shrugged. “What? It’s the dragon-way to get places.”

“Well, until you turn into a dragon, you’re going to have to do things the human-way,” Ginny said sternly.

He looked for a moment like he might argue with her, but he thought better of it. Too right, too— Ginny had shown the twins rather quickly that they wouldn’t be cheeky with her the way they were with everybody else. Caden had told her she was the only person they really feared, and she was content with that.

“Here you go,” Iris told Albus. She handed his wand to him and eyed the pile of sweets on the bedside table with interest. Albus noticed.

“Would you like a chocolate frog, Iris?” he asked.

She nodded. “More than anything. He’s _starving_ us!”

 _He_ was James going by Iris’s finger jab towards James. He scowled.

“We are not starving you! You two just refuse to eat the things we cook— honestly, what child doesn’t like fish fingers or spaghetti bolognese?!”

“It’s no use,” Albus told James. “They wouldn’t eat pizza last time they were with Scorp and me. _Accio chocolate frogs._ ”

“Elliot, stop bouncing on the bed!” Ginny scolded, her eyes glued to her grandson. As far as they knew, Albus’s internal wounds were completely healed, but she still didn’t want Elliot jostling him about so much.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Albus complained. Ginny’s eyes snapped towards him at once.

“What? What’s wrong? What hurts?” she asked, concerned.

He appeared annoyed, not pained. He was looking at his wand. “It _is_ messed up! I can’t believe it! The number of wands I’ve gone through in my life is _ridiculous_!”

Ginny furrowed her brow. “Messed up? It’s fine; Evvie grabbed it off the ground before anybody stepped on it.”

“No. Look.” Albus directed his wand towards his bedside table for good measure and cast another summoning spell. The chocolate frog didn’t so much as budge.

“Weird,” James said, puzzled.

“Let me see it,” Ginny requested, holding her hand out. Of all her children’s wands, Albus’s responded the best to her. It felt very similar in her hand to her own. She walked over to the bed and leaned over to take it from Albus. The second she closed her fist around it, her palm warmed. She could feel the hum of magic— there was no other word to describe the way it flowed within her. Still, for good measure, she turned and summoned the same chocolate frog Al had been summoning. When it flew at once into her outreached hand, her stomach dropped.

Albus’s face fell, too.

“Maybe it’s just the combination of you and your wand,” Jamie said quickly. “I’ve heard of that happening before! Sometimes, especially after great trauma, there’s a disconnect there between a wizard and his previous wand. Here, try mine.”

James eagerly passed his wand to Albus. Albus looked sick as he directed it towards the door. The incantation he uttered should have made the door shut. Nothing happened.

“Are you ill again, Albus?” Elliot wondered.

“Maybe you are,” James said. “Maybe you’re still recovering from your illness and you’re just too magically drained!”

But Ginny had been magically drained before. She had experienced that the night dementors stormed Hogwarts in Albus’s fifth year. It had been debilitating. Albus seemed fine. He was eating, talking animatedly, up and about as much as Scorpius and Lyra allowed. He wasn’t shaking from bone-deep fatigue. This was something else. Something was wrong. Ginny could feel it, and when she locked eyes with Al, she could tell he could, too.

“Don’t panic,” Iris scolded Albus. She squirmed closer and leaned over his chest. Her little hands grasped his face, directing his eyes to her. “Don’t panic, man. It only makes you go like this—” she feigned panicked gasping.

James look at Ginny. “What does it mean?”

Ginny shook her head helplessly. “I dunno. I have no idea.”

But she did know.

It meant that what they thought was over was really just beginning.

* * *

 

“Don’t tell him,” Albus hissed, moments before Scorpius entered the bedroom. Ginny had no time to question that before Scorpius and Lyra exploded in. They leapt onto the bed, smothered Albus in hugs, kisses, and stories of their days, and Ginny made herself scarce. She wandered through their home, eventually running into Harry as he Floo’d into the kitchen. He frowned from one glance at her expression.

“What?” he asked gravely.

“Al. He’s fine…I mean, I think he’s fine. But…Harry, he can’t do magic.”

Harry’s frown intensified. It made the lines on his forehead deeper. “What do you mean? He’s too tired?”

“No. He can’t do it at all. Nothing. His wand…it’s dead in his hand. And earlier he was telling me all about how he felt, I dunno, empty. Maybe…maybe he’s feeling that way because his magic is gone.”

Panic flashed behind Harry’s green eyes. He mastered it quickly enough.

“But where would it have gone? Magical ability just can’t…disappear.”

“Maybe that vial he took was poison.”

“But what poison can take away magical ability? It’s in his blood!”

“Yes, well, it’s in Squibs’ blood, too,” Ginny shot back, stressed.

“But they’ve been nonmagical since birth! Albus was just doing magic two days ago! I’ll bet he’s just tired, Gin. What did Scorpius say?”

“Nothing. Because he doesn’t know. Albus told me to keep it a secret.”

“Er…why?”

“Because he doesn’t want his husband to fret? Merlin, I don’t know!”

“Gin, don’t snap at me— I didn’t hurt our son,” Harry reproached gently.

She lowered her guard at once. Her shoulders physically depressed.

“Sorry. I know. You’re right. I’m just— I’m worried, and I’m confused, and I don’t know what to tell Al.”

She felt a bit better when Harry crossed the distance between them and took her into his arms. She leaned into his frame and pressed her face into his chest.

“And Lu’s still gone. James can’t get in touch with her.”

“I know,” Harry told her softly. “I’m sure she’s fine. And we’ll…figure this out. We’ll figure out what’s happening with Albus. But at least he’s still with us.”

It was more than she could have hoped for in her darkest moments. And Harry was undoubtedly right, but she couldn’t imagine the trauma of waking up nonmagical after living one’s entire life magical. She had never heard of it happening before; she had no idea how one could adjust to it. She didn’t know how deeply this problem ran, either. Was it just that he couldn’t perform magic? Or would he be unable to see the things that Muggles couldn’t— dementors, magical objects, places concealed from Muggles? Would he be completely barred from their world? His daughter’s world?

And what if this wasn’t the only side-effect from that vial? What if this was only the start— what if it only healed him temporarily?

The thought of him declining again was excruciating. How many times would Ginny have to live out the night of his death? No mother should have to do it even once. Not even once. And she had done it twice now.

* * *

 

That night, Albus acted as if they’d never discovered anything amiss.

He claimed he was feeling so recovered that he could cook; Lyra and Scorpius both fought it at first, but Albus seemed so lively and well that even they relented near dinnertime. Albus stood at the cooktop and did everything the muggle way, and no one said anything because that’s the way Harry sometimes did it, too. But Ginny felt sick in her heart and in her gut. Every bite of her dinner stuck to her throat and felt heavy in her stomach once it went down.

Over dessert, once Scorpius had stepped briefly out of the room, she asked: “Aren’t you going to tell him?”

Albus looked older than she’d ever seen him for a moment. Or maybe it was just that he was tired.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Well, you’ll have to, won’t you?” James pointed out. There was a new wrinkle between his eyebrows that hadn’t been there moments prior. Ginny knew it’d smooth away once he stopped pursing his brow in worry, but that wasn’t looking likely any time soon. “He’ll notice you not using magic.”

“I suppose,” Albus agreed. “But he’s not going to notice tonight. And tonight, I just want to go to sleep without my husband kissing me goodnight with tears in his eyes, like he thinks it might be the last time he ever sees me. He deserves a night to not worry, a night to think everything’s okay. I don’t want to take that away.”

“And what if this is something serious? Something life-threatening?” Ginny demanded. “Something that’s going to get worse?”

“Then it does. Scorpius and Lyra crying and worrying some more won’t stop it. Nobody can help me.”

“You don’t know that!” Harry hissed, horrified. “We don’t understand what’s happened to you at all so we’ve no way of knowing who can or can’t help you!”

Albus was ready to respond, but he pursed his lips and swallowed the retort as Scorpius stepped back into the room. He was carrying a lemon meringue pie and beaming.

“Stopped by Hugo’s to get it for you,” he beamed. “Nothing says ‘Yay! I Lived!” like lemon meringue!”

Ginny couldn’t even get herself to stomach a bite.

* * *

 

Harry wanted to talk to Ron and Hermione about it.

Ginny wanted to talk to Draco.

Over the past decade, he had become one of her closest confidants. No— he was family. And not only on a technicality. Not only because Scorpius was her son-in-law. He was really, truly family to her. And in times like this, it was his thoughts she wanted to hear.

She, Harry, Draco, Ron, and Hermione ordinarily made quite the think tank when in the same room together. But tonight, nobody had much to say. Except Ron, who just kept repeating “blimey…” in a glum tone.

“What in Merlin’s name cures a horrible, dark curse _and_ removes magical ability?” Hermione asked quietly, stunned. “Has anyone contacted you with the vial contents yet?”

“No,” Ginny said numbly.

“Maybe it’s temporary,” Draco suggested.

“Yeah! Maybe his body’s just rebooting. Like a muggle computer,” Ron added.

“Only human bodies _aren’t_ muggle computers,” Ginny muttered.

“I know. That’s why I said _like_ a muggle computer—”

Hermione interrupted their budding spat.

“Did he seem to feel all right beyond not being able to do magic?” Hermione wondered.

“I guess so. He just kept saying he felt empty, but he said it wasn’t really painful, just uncomfortable. Do you think we can sense our magical abilities?” Ginny asked.

“I don’t know. I never would’ve considered it before, but maybe.”

“It’s connected somehow,” Harry muttered. Ginny looked up and watched her husband pace their sitting room floor. She felt similarly anxious. “Whatever made his magic disappear also cured him. But how?”

Hermione summoned a chalk board. Ron didn’t even tease her; he stood beside it and held it upright while she pressed a piece of chalk to it. Ginny and Draco sat side-by-side and watched as she wrote:

_Substance?_

  * _Cured internal and external hemorrhaging_
  * _Removed magical ability?_



To Ginny, there was nothing similar about those two things. The five of them stared at the board for what felt like a long while. Finally, Draco spoke.

“Maybe we should consider what _caused_ the bleeding in the first place.”

Ginny’s immediate thought was _the window,_ but then she remembered that that wasn’t really true. The window had caused this particular situation, but the reason he’d nearly bled to death was from that curse.

Hermione nodded. She turned and added:

  * _Cured internal and external hemorrhaging —_ ** _caused by Dark Magic._**



“Well that’s easy,” Ron said suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. He was leaning over the board and looking down at his wife’s writing. “That mystery potion or whatever it was didn’t cure Albus at all. It just wiped him clean of magic. All magic. His _and_ the Dark Magic still there from that curse.”

Ginny felt a thrill of something she couldn’t name. Fear? Relief? Whatever it was made her sit up straighter, made her heart pound harder.

“Wait,” Harry said. He’d stopped pacing. “So Albus getting better was just a coincidence? All it did was remove his magical ability— it was just lucky that it was magic— Dark Magic— that happened to be killing him?”

Ron shrugged. “I dunno, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“But where did they get this vial in the first place? Draco, did Scorpius tell you?” Hermione asked. “I’ve never heard of any sort of potion or substance that could just remove magic from somebody.”

“I have no idea,” Draco admitted. He sounded troubled. “I suppose it’s possible that…well, maybe it’s something Scorpius himself made.”

Ginny blinked. She hadn’t heard that Scorpius was in the business of making any sort of potion. That was typically Lily’s preferred past-time. And even if he was, why would he make something that would take away magic?

“Scorpius? Did he tell you he was making potions?” Harry asked.

“No. But this potion or substance…whatever it is…Scorpius had a recurring dream about something like it when he was very small. I doubt he even remembers. It was during a particularly bad phase of Astoria’s illness. He would wake up in our bed in a fright, and all he could tell us about was a glass bottle that could take his mum’s illness away. I never thought a thing of it. It seemed natural that Scorpius should be having dreams of ways to save his mother. But this…I think this substance could have saved Astoria. If it removed all magic and all traces of it, including the Dark Magic hurting Albus, it could have removed the curse hurting Astoria. Even if Scorpius didn’t create it, he knew something about it. I can’t imagine he ever would have let Albus take something unknown.”

“Lyra knew something about it, too,” Ginny recalled. It was somewhat difficult to replay her scattered memories of that horrible night because they were so traumatic, but she could picture Lyra’s fervent eyes, the serious way she demanded Albus needed the ‘perfume bottle’. She’d even known it was in Scorpius’s pockets— she’d tried to search them herself to find it. She had known it would cure her dad. How?

“So either Scorpius has been making it and he told Lyra about it, or…” Harry trailed off. He rubbed over his scar, agitated. After a moment, he turned and snatched his cloak off the back of the sofa. “I’m going over there. I can’t stand this. I need to figure out what’s happening.”

“Right now? They’ll be asleep. You’ll wake Lyra,” Draco protested.

“Good. She knows something, too. Maybe she’ll tell us what the hell is going on,” Harry said.

“It can’t wait ’til morning?”

“No!” Harry boomed. “It can’t! Because for all we know, my son is dying again! We don’t know what’s happening with him, and he’s just pretending like nothing is, and Scorpius knows something about that vial, and I need to know that my son is going to be okay!”

Ginny stood. She crossed over and stood by her husband, sinking her hand into his. She understood Draco’s protests, but she understood Harry’s heart more. And she needed answers, too.

“C’mon,” she said.

Draco stood. “Then I’m coming, too. Albus is my…he’s family. He’s my family, too.”

Ron made a face at that, but Ginny wouldn’t dare contradict Draco’s statement: she felt the same way about Scorpius.

* * *

 

Their worries about waking Lyra were unfounded. She was already awake.

“Ginny!! Harry!! Grandfather!!” she exclaimed.

She was sitting at the kitchen table in her frilly dressing gown, her hair mused like she’d recently woken. While she scampered off her chair and took off sprinting into Harry’s arms, Ginny appraised her son. He was mixing lavender honey into a crystalline mug of warm milk. His back was to them, but there was no indication that anything was wrong. He didn’t seem to be declining.

Ginny returned Lyra’s hug, kissed her hair, and then stepped over to stand beside Albus. He looked down at her.

“It’s late,” he said.

“Yes. It is. What’s Lyra doing up?” wondered Ginny. She didn’t offer any explanations as to why she, Harry, and Draco had arrived.

“Nightmare. Needed time with me. We’re having honey and milk.”

Albus carried two identical mugs to the table. His hands didn’t so much as quake as he did. Ginny trailed after him, sitting in the seat beside him once he sat. Draco set Lyra down in front of her warm milk. She wrapped her tiny hands around the mug and took an eager sip.

“Daddy, Harry and Ginny and Grandfather need some,” Lyra said. She seemed overjoyed to have them all there. “Did you have nightmares, too?” she asked them.

“Sort of,” Ginny admitted. “We just came to check on your daddy.”

“Me too. I check on him all the time, too,” Lyra said seriously.

“I’m fine,” Albus told them. It sounded genuine, but Ginny still exchanged a look with Harry and Draco. “Really. I’m fine.”

Harry shot a hesitant look at Lyra before asking his next question.

“The problem is fixed?”

“No. But I’m not worried about it.”

“How are you not worried about it?” Ginny demanded.

Albus shrugged. “Just not really top of my worries right now. I’m just glad I’m here with my family. And really, it’s not too unexpected…I was called a Slytherin Squib long before it was actually true.”

“You’re not concerned that whatever was in that vial might have poisoned you? You’re not curious about how it cured you? You’re not frightened?” Ginny challenged.

“Not particularly. The way I see it, I’m alive when I thought for sure I’d be dead. I can handle whatever else comes. Right now, I just want my family to recover from what they went through.”

He sounded honest enough. Ginny just couldn’t get herself to feel reassured, though. It didn’t matter how calm Albus appeared.

“What was in that vial, Albus? Where did Scorpius get it? Did he know what it would do? Lyra, how did you know that vial would save Daddy?” Harry asked.

“I just knew. I found it at the bad people’s place, the place Iris and Elliot and I went when we got lost in the Floo. The kidnappers’ place. It was in this room with all these other pretty bottles. Then I had a dream that it saved Daddy so I knew that it would,” Lyra explained.

Ginny and Draco looked at each other in surprise.

“You got that vial from the kidnappers? The Free Magics who took Dahlia?” Ginny asked.

Lyra nodded. She took another sip of her milk, unperturbed.

“How did you know to grab that particular vial if there were other ones?” Draco questioned.

Lyra shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess my hand just knew.”

“And Papa wasn’t worried about giving Daddy that vial when it came from the Free Magics?”

“Why did the Free Magics have vials to remove magical ability in the first place?” Harry muttered, more to himself than to them. “They’re trying to reinstate magical ability, not remove it…unless…unless their plan was to remove the magic from the magical children they kidnapped to make a statement…”

“Papa knew the bottle, too,” Lyra said. “He told me he sees it all the time in his dreams. So we knew it was safe.”

Ginny doubted they _knew_ anything. Scorpius had probably just thought that was their last possible chance at saving Albus. And it seemed to have turned out all right; Albus looked perfectly normal right now, sipping at his warm drink, at ease.

Why wasn’t he worried? Ginny would have been worried. Ginny would have been mourning. She couldn’t imagine not being able to do magic…couldn’t imagine the enormity of that loss…but Albus looked more unburdened than she’d seen him in decades.

They sat in silence while Lyra finished her milk. Once she was done, Albus kissed her forehead and set a guiding hand on her back, nudging her back towards the stairs.

“Go on back to bed. Papa’s probably lonely. I’ll be right up— I’m going to wash our mugs,” Albus said.

Lyra yawned into her palm. “Okay. Do you need help, Daddy?”

“No, I’ve got it. Go on up, pumpkin.”

“Okay,” Lyra said.

She hugged and kissed her grandparents goodnight, and as soon as she was up the stairs and out of sight, Albus turned to the three of them.

“I need to show you something,” he told them.

Ginny’s heart plummeted in terror. She watched as Albus held his hand out to them. She half expected to see some sort of horrible injury, or dangerous rash— something to indicate he’d been poisoned. Instead, she saw nothing but skin.

“What is it?” Harry asked.

In reply, Albus pulled a muggle pin from his pocket. Ginny’s heart trembled in terror when he suddenly jabbed it into his palm. A tiny bead of blood emerged from the pinprick— Ginny threw herself forward in panic and reached for Albus’s neck, for the powder he should’ve had with him at all times— but Harry reached out and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back.

“Wait,” Harry said sharply. “Look.”

Ginny followed his gaze towards Albus’s hand. She’d expected to see rivets of blood flowing from that one pinprick. Instead, she saw him wipe the bead of blood onto his trousers, and that was it. The bleeding nearly stopped completely.

Ginny hadn’t seen that happen since Albus was fifteen. All three of them were visibly shocked.

“I cut my thumb a bit while I was making dinner,” Albus told them softly. “I noticed right away that I wasn’t bleeding like I’m used to. It just bled a tiny bit, and then it stopped on its own.”

“We must’ve been right, then,” Draco said quietly. “That substance must remove all magic— good and Dark.”

Albus wiped the last bit of blood off his hand and then met Ginny’s eyes.

“So that’s why I’m not freaking out. Because right now, knowing I’m cured from that horrible curse…I’ll take that cure at whatever the cost.”

“Al, we’ve still got to figure out what that vial had in it, though,” Harry said seriously. “It could still cause other problems later. Scorpius doesn’t really know what it is, does he?”

“No.”

“If we figure out what’s in it, maybe we can figure out how to get your magical abilities back,” Draco pointed out.

“And we need to figure out what a vial like that was doing in the Free Magics’ hands in the first place,” Harry added. He sounded tired, and when Ginny glanced at him, he looked weary.

“And all that can wait. I just want to be with my family. That’s all. I’m not worried about the rest of it right now. Honest, Mum. I’m fine,” Albus said. He sighed a moment later. “I can see you and Dad aren’t going to believe me, though. So when you end up storming into the Ministry in search of answers, Dad, could you tell my boss I quit?”

A hush settled over the room. Ginny had waited years to hear him say that. She had begged him not to become an Auror and had spent every week since he’d first taken the job trying to talk him into something else. So she figured she’d feel overjoyed right now, but she didn’t. Instead, she felt upset. She had wanted him to do something safer, yes, but she didn’t want that choice to come because of _this_.

“Why don’t we wait to figure out what’s going on with you before we do that,” Harry said. “This could all be temporary, after all. Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow good as new.”

“Maybe I will. Doesn’t matter. I’m not going back to that office either way,” Albus said, decided.

“Al—”

“Mum,” Albus interrupted. “I’m really fine. I’m better than fine. I’m alive, and to make things even better, I can get a paper cut now without bleeding to death in moments. Maybe you should be more worried about Lily. She’s the one missing, after all.”

Ginny grimaced. “I’m sure she’s fine…we really ought to find a way to get in touch with her, though, Harry,” she said.

Harry rubbed underneath the bridge of his glasses. “I’m going to head to the Ministry now. I’ll see if I can figure something out.”

Ginny knew if she hadn’t been so focused in on Albus’s recent handicap that she’d be full-scale worrying about Lily and Caden. Their absence was becoming unsettling. They didn’t even know that Albus was okay yet— they were meant to be back at once. What could have held them up this much? What if something had happened to them?

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “We’re not sleeping tonight, are we?”

“There was never a chance of it,” Harry said.

Ginny set her head against his shoulder and sighed. “Right.”

* * *

 

Hermione was already at the Ministry trying to wheedle information from the Head of the Department of Unknown Magical Substances.

“I understand that. And I’m telling you to move it to the _front_ of the queue. This is a matter of public safety,” Hermione insisted.

“Everything we deal with is a matter of public safety until we confirm what it is or isn’t,” the Head of the department countered. “I’ve got a strange orange substance that’s covered one fourth of Islington— that’s taking precedence right now.”

“And is that orange substance affiliated with the Free Magics?”

“Might be,” the Head said. “Won’t know ’til we find out more about it, will we?”

Harry stepped up, seemingly to talk some sense into the man, but Hermione set a halting hand on his arm.

“It’s no use,” Hermione muttered crossly.

“Oh, there’s always a use,” Harry countered.

“Not with this idiot,” she murmured, where only Harry and Ginny could hear from their places at her side. “Oh, before I forget, Lily was looking for you two.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow. “We’re looking for _her_. Is she back? Or did she just get in contact with you?”

“She’s back. Went straight to St. Mungo’s, but they told her what happened with Albus, so she went to the Den, but you lot weren’t there, so she came here— I think she was headed towards James’s next.”

Harry shot another look at the department head.

“I’m dealing with this. Go update Lily. I didn’t have time to tell her much,” Hermione ordered. “You too, Gin.”

She didn’t have to be told twice; she knew her sister-in-law could get more done there than they could, and anyway, Lily needed to know what was going on with her brother.

* * *

 

“Why do you think she came to the Ministry before going to James’s?” Ginny wondered.

“She probably figured we’d be here trying to find whoever hurt Al. Shall we Floo or apparate?”

“Apparate. Last time they had toys blocking in front of the fireplace and I nearly fell on my face.”

“That happened to me last time, too,” Harry shared.

They traveled down to the atrium, thankfully only stopped a few times by people wishing to speak with Harry. They’d just stepped into the relatively-empty space when Ginny heard her name— or one of them, anyway.

“Mum!”

She turned towards her daughter’s voice at once. And then she blinked. And then she blinked again.

“Harry,” Ginny muttered, reaching out to grab Harry’s hand. “Do you see what I see?”

“Our daughter holding an irate stolen phoenix? Yep. Right there with you,” he muttered back.

Lily crossed over to them in the time it took them to confirm what they were seeing. She looked beyond exhausted, and the scratches going up and down her arms— some still bleeding— told them this phoenix wasn’t as domesticated as one might hope.

“So, funny thing,” Lily greeted them. “I located a phoenix, took the bloody thing all the way here, and when I got here, I found out Al’s at home perfectly recovered. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad, but couldn’t someone have sent an owl to me so I didn’t have to kidnap Sparky? He’s a primadonna with a superiority complex.”

“Er…sorry, Lu,” Harry said. “To be fair, we were a bit overwhelmed, what with your brother…” he trailed off. “And then James tried to owl you, but his owl came back— it couldn’t find you for some reason.”

“Probably because I was in a tunnel under the Moutohora Macaws’ headquarters.”

“Yeah, that would do it,” Harry said flatly.

Ginny eyed the haughty-looking bird. She remembered Fawkes as regal, elegant, noble. This bird looked like the only thing it loved in life was its own reflection. “How are you going to get Sparky back?”

Lily scowled. “I’m going to give him back the locket I stole so he’ll fly back.” She caught both Ginny and Harry’s baffled look. “It’s a long story. He carries a locket around in his beak. It has a photo of him and the Moutohora Macaws in it. He won’t separate from me ’til I give it back to him.”

Ginny nearly commented on that twice, but decided at the last minute both times that she was too tired to even begin that conversation.

“Well, give it back and let him fly home. He looks a bit…” Harry trailed off. He turned to Ginny afterwards. “Picture Lockhart as a bird…” Ginny began laughing at once. Harry pointed at Sparky. “See it? Right?”

“Unfortunately,” Ginny agreed.

Lily turned and stifled a yawn into the phoenix’s feathers. He looked tremendously offended; he took off from Lily’s shoulder and circled around her in fast, agitated circles, but he never went very far at all. Fame had reduced the bird to something comically shallow.

“Well, I’m going to go find my spawn. Hey…wait…if you’re both here, who’s watching them?!”

Ginny blinked. “James has them. I thought you knew that.”

Lily’s jaw dropped. “What?! No! I asked _you_ to watch them!”

“Well I was a bit preoccupied what with my _own_ spawn nearly dying!”

“Then you should’ve told me that and I could’ve made other arrangements! Oh _Merlin_! _James?!_ My poor children! They’re probably miserable!”

Ginny felt even more offended than Sparky had looked when Lily yawned into his polished, famed feathers.

“What the hell do you have against Jamie?! He’s a magnificent father! Why would your kids be miserable?!”

“Tsk, tsk,” Harry told Lily. “You know better than to insult Jamie in front of Ginny. That’s _her_ locket.”

“Because he’s _James!_ He sings love songs to Nora in public! He says things like ‘all aboard the hug train!’! He’s probably been smothering them alive!”

“A little smothering would be good for those two,” Ginny snapped. “They’re a bit feral.”

Harry laughed. Lily glowered at them.

“Yeah, well, keep laughing! They’re one-fourth _you_! And one-fourth you, too, Dad!” Lily pulled her hair over her shoulder and walked off, seemingly to ‘rescue’ her children from good parenting.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Harry said tiredly. “Let’s just table that exchange for a later time.”

Ginny knocked her hip into his. “Deal. Ready to go interrogate the Department of Unknown Magical Substances?”

“I’ve been ready.”

They headed back in the direction they’d came. As they stepped onto the lift, something occurred to Ginny.

“Hey…where is our son-in-law?” she demanded.

Harry blinked. “In bed with his husband? It’s the middle of the night.”

“No. Our _other_ son-in-law.”

Harry frowned. “Oh…right! He wasn’t there! But he couldn’t be with his kids because Lily didn’t know where they were…hmm…think he went to see how Albus was?”

“In the middle of the night? I doubt it. Wouldn’t be like him.” Ginny stepped in front of Harry and leaned back against the front of his body as a surprising amount of people piled on at level four. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You know, they’ve been strange this entire trip.”

“Lily and Caden?” Harry whispered back.

“Yeah.”

“Weirder than normal, you mean?”

“Obviously. What with Lily’s random disappearances and now Caden’s, too…”

“Something to watch. Though we’ve really got plenty to watch right now.”

The lift doors opened. Ginny set eyes on the head of the Department of Magical Substances, still talking seriously with Hermione.

“Namely that one,” Ginny muttered. She grabbed Harry’s elbow and pulled. “C’mon, Harry Potter. Use your clout.”

“Merlin, Gin, my clout is for you and only you. You should know that by now…”

* * *

 

“Minister for Magic _and_ the man who defeated Lord Voldemort and the best they could do for us was moving our ticket up to second in the queue. _Second.”_ Ginny threw herself down onto their bed with a scowl. She was so tired she didn’t even want to take her shoes off. She closed her eyes and seethed.

“Well, that orange substance spreading over Islington certainly looks more menacing than an unmarked, stolen vial someone willingly swallowed. And the substance technically saved Albus’s life while the orange stuff is making muggles limp and cough.”

“Don’t defend that arse! I despise him and his face and his bone marrow.”

“All right, then.” The bed springs squeaked slightly as Harry flopped down onto his back beside her. Ginny let her head fall against his shoulder. “Maybe this isn’t such a terrible thing.”

“Waiting is always a terrible thing. Sometimes it’s worth it in the end, but the act itself is still horrid.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about this situation with Albus. I’ve been thinking about it…he seemed happy when he was making dinner. Free, sort of. Maybe it would be good for him to be free from that obligation he’s always felt to live up to the Potter name. It gave him the courage to quit his job, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know if it was his magical power disappearing that did that so much as the near-death experience. Things like that tend to change your world view.”

“Either way, maybe he’ll be happier,” Harry suggested.

Ginny wasn’t sure. There was so much they still didn’t know; they had no idea how much of their society he’d be barred from. That would determine quite a lot. If he couldn’t even go to Lyra’s school to have lunch with her, there’s was no way that’d improve his quality of life.

“I just want him to be okay.” It came out sounding much smaller and feebler than Ginny had meant it to. She felt vulnerable after the words filled the space between them.

Harry’s hand settled on her thigh. “I know. Me too. I’ve always wanted that. Maybe we’ll finally get it one of these days.”

“I thought we had it before.”

“I know. I did, too. Maybe this time. Maybe.”

Ginny stifled a yawn into Harry’s shoulder. “What do _you_ think was in that vial?”

“For Albus? A blessing. It saved him. There’s no doubt about that. But in general? Bad news.”

Ginny’s stomach turned. “I was thinking that, too.”

Harry’s arm lifted to wrap around her. Ginny scooted closer to him and leaned against his body. He was warm; the smell of him was her greatest sense of home.

“We’ll worry about the Free Magics in the morning,” he said.

She drifted off thinking about how lucky she was to have Harry as her life partner, her fellow worrier.


End file.
